


Pure Insanity

by lena7623



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe-ish, M/M, Rating: M, insane people, rapid babble
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:28:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lena7623/pseuds/lena7623
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man insists that he's Loki of Asgard, and ends up in a mental institution. Was he really sent here as punishment for his misdeeds in New York as he insists, or is he just a sadly deranged soul? Your guess is as good as mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

(Author’s Note: In the vain effort to help clear things up, I’m including little mini-infos about all of the chars and how they changed for this particular AU fic. I’m not one to usually write something so kinda off the wall, but when sigridhr posted 100 Ideas for Your Inevitable Loki Fanfic, I cracked up...and then got a plot bunny for one of them. I didn’t follow it exactly, as Thor is still Loki’s brother rather than his nurse, but still, I get credit! Still, everyone having new names can be hard to follow, so I included this. Hope it helps!

Loki - Jeremy Elder. Started to exhibit signs of psychosis in college. Family checked him in a few years ago because he attacked his older brother in a fit of insane rage screaming about how he only wanted to be his equal, etc. Was a history major in college, had only about a year left, but has spent the last three years at the hospital in upper New York. Never spoke in a British accent until he started to go off the deep end.

Thor - Randal Elder. Jeremy's older brother. Was the unintentional 'favorite' of his father. Older by three years. Is now married to a woman named Helena with two children. Despite his brother attacking him, still visits him weekly, even though Jeremy usually argues with him and chases him out.

Coulson - William Rankins. Jeremy's first shrink. He felt that things were going alright until Jeremy stabbed him in the chest with a pen. While William survived, the staff felt that it was best that they find Jeremy another psychiatrist.

Fury - Thomas Jones. Administrator of the hospital.

Maria Hill - Joann Gentry. Head nurse.

Natasha - Christina Donahue. Jeremy's shrink after he attacked William Rankins.

Tony Stark - Louis Gooden. Fellow patient. Schizophrenic and narcissist. Occasionally speaks too rapidly to be understood.

Pepper Potts - Laura Gooden. Louis's sister. Visits every week. They don't have parents, so she was the one who checked Louis into the facility.

Clint Barton - Jeff Smith. Orderly

Bruce Banner - William Godfrey. Doctor. The original man who examined Jeremy and recommended him to the particular hospital he ends up at. 

Steve Rogers - Cliff Huston. Volunteer. Reads to patients.


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One: Speaking Like Shakespeare in the Park

The night that the Elder family finally had to check their son into the posh medical facility that he would spend several years in had started off as fairly normal. Jeremy had come home from college several months before. His mother simply assumed that he had taken too many classes and had a bit of a break down. He was always trying to live up to his doctor brother, Randal, but had wanted to study history instead of medicine. His father had frowned on that, but Jeremy had kept to it. However, when he stopped going to classes and occasionally having ‘fits’ as his roommate had described them, his mother, Elaina, had suggested that Jeremy take the semester off and come home. 

They were all eating dinner around the table. Randal and his wife Helena had come to visit and Jeremy had kept quiet, staring daggers at his brother all night but mostly keeping to himself. Finally, Randal had broken down, slamming his fork against the table and asking, “Jeremy, why are you staring at me like that? You’re looking at me like I killed your puppy or something.” 

Jeremy slammed his fists against the table. “You know what you did!” he yelled, standing up from the table. “All my life I’ve had to stand in your shadow while father favored you! All I ever wanted was to be your equal!” 

Randal’s eyes went wide and he stared, mouth agape, at his brother for a moment. “What the hell are you talking about, and why are you talking like you’re in a Shakespeare production in the park?” Normally Jeremy spoke with an upper crust New York accent like the rest of his family, but tonight he was speaking in a clipped British accent that Elaina had been hearing him speak in more and more when they talked. He had never snapped at her as he was at his brother, though. She had no idea where this was coming from. 

Before Randal could say anything else, though, Jeremy leaped over the table, slamming into his brother and screaming at him, barely sounding coherent at this point. Elaina and her husband both leapt up and ran for them, trying to pull Jeremy off his brother who, up until recently, he had only loved and adored. When they managed to remove him, his face went blank and his body went slack, sitting down on the floor. He was now completely docile while they checked on Randal, who was coughing because his brother had his hands wrapped around the older man’s throat. 

Despite it all, one thing that was sticking in the back of Elaina’s head was that she was wondering why on earth her younger son was calling Randal ‘Thor.’ She knew that name from somewhere, but she just couldn’t place it...

OoOoOoOo

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Elder, but we have to lock him up somewhere that he can’t hurt others.” Elaina was sure that Dr. William Godfrey was a smart man, but she couldn’t believe that locking up her son was the best thing for him. “If he hadn’t attacked his brother, then we might be able to treat him as an outpatient, but I can’t ethically allow a violent man to roam around.” 

Elaina looked over the soft spoken man for a moment. With his glasses and his salt and pepper hair that almost hung in his eyes, he looked more like the absent-minded professor than someone who worked in a mental hospital, but he was one of the best doctors in the state, so her husband had put in a personal call to him and, soon enough, he was arriving for a house call. “But we can watch over him here! You can’t be serious. He’s not crazy. He doesn’t belong in one of those places,” she protested. 

Dr. Godfrey shook his head. “When I talked to him, he was claiming to be the god Loki. Do you know who that is?” When she shook her head, he continued. “He’s the Norse god of Mischief. He’s showing signs of severe delusions. That alone shouldn’t be treated in a home environment, but I understand that your family can afford the absolute best care.” He looked over at Jeremy, who at the moment seemed to have slipped into another catatonic state, his long legs pulled up to his chest with his arms wrapped around his knees. “Has he always had a bad relationship with his brother?” 

Elaina vigorously shook her head. “No! Up until recently, they got along wonderfully. I don’t know where this is coming from. We thought that he was simply exhausted from school.” 

The doctor shook his head. “Exhaustion doesn’t cause vicious attacks like the one you described. We’re already taking care of this as quietly as we can, Mrs. Elder. Normally this would be something that the police would be dealing with, but luckily, we don’t have to worry about anything like that. All we need to do is take him to the home and work on him, figure out exactly what’s going on.”

She knew that the doctor was right. They were lucky that Randal was willing to go along with the idea that they should have Jeremy see a doctor rather than do something like get the police involved. They were also lucky that they had the money to send him to the best place in the state. 

“How aware is he right now?” she asked him. He had simply stopped moving after everyone had pulled him off his brother. 

“I shot him with a sedative, just in case,” the doctor told her. “Like I told you, we can’t leave him here. He’s talking about being Loki.” He looked Elaina over for a moment. “Is Jeremy adopted?” 

Elaina’s eyes went wide. “What? No! I had both of my sons. Why on earth would you ask that?” 

“Some of his rambling was about you and your husband not being his parents,” the doctor explained. “I wasn’t sure if it was true or not. I felt the need to ask.” 

Elaina put her face into her hands, trying her damnedest not to cry in front of this man. “I just don’t understand where all of this is coming from. I have no idea what is going on with my son.” She let out a half-choked sob. “I don’t know what made him like this.” 

The doctor reached over and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “It could be any number of things, ma’am, and many of them don’t present themselves until someone is in their mid-twenties, like your son. This is something that you couldn’t have prevented from happening.” 

OoOoOoOo

Loki watched from his vantage point as his mother talked to the doctor. They thought that he was in a ‘catatonic state,’ but he was really just assessing his situation. He knew that they were all lying to him, trying to convince him that he was someone else, this ‘Jeremy Elder.’ He knew the truth, however. He knew who he really was, and he knew who all they really were, but he wasn’t sure what sort of game they were playing with him right now. He would find out soon enough, though. 

He spent hours with the doctor, allowing him to put him in the transport and take him to this ‘facility’ that was supposed to contain him. He wondered if they really believed this sort of stuff. Why did they think that they could trap a god in padded walls and with medication? Even though this doctor, whom, no matter the name that he gave, he knew to be Bruce Banner, had said that he should be heavily sedated, he felt perfectly lucid. Banner had injected him with something, surely, but it had no effect on him. He did not feel sleepy nor did his thoughts feel clouded. 

His mother had accompanied him to the facility, and it at least wasn’t a hovel. There were much more wretched places to stay on this realm, so this wasn’t too unpleasant, at least for now. He needed to figure out his resources and get away, though. He couldn’t feel his magic within him. Odin had likely found a way to block it, and, as soon as he figured out how, Loki would unleash it and he would be free of this wretched place. 

Then he would make them all pay for caging a god. 

OoOoOoOo

The arrival process was calm, as Loki wanted it to be. All that he wanted was for them to lower their guard around him, as much as they possibly could. He felt almost as if he were waking up from a long sleep. His memories for a while before the other day when he attacked his brother across the dinner table were fuzzy, although he wouldn’t admit this to anyone. That would be a sign of weakness. Part of him wondered if this was some elaborate punishment set up by his father, to trap him in some mortal life, knowing what he truly knew, seeing everyone that he knew around him. That alone might be enough to drive him insane. 

For the first three days that he was at the facility, he didn’t talk to anyone. Whenever one of the doctors would come over to talk to him, he didn’t say anything, just stared ahead. When they put him in ‘group’ situations, he kept quiet as well. The only time that he did much of anything other than basic functions (eats, sleep, etc) was when one of the larger patients thought that his silence meant that he was weak. One well placed plastic knife in the fleshy part of his eye told him different. Did these people really think that he couldn’t hurt people with plastic? That was laughable. 

He spent a day locked up alone in his room until he was let out again. He had hoped for longer alone, but, other than being watched more closely, little had changed. It was his fifth day in the facility that he ran into Tony Stark. The man had literally ran into him. It seemed that, no matter what reality you put Tony Stark in, he was still a rude ass. 

Loki had been walking to...somewhere, likely nowhere in particular. When there weren’t therapy sessions, the doctors here actually allowed for the patients to walk the grounds. Loki had an orderly following him around, someone who stayed out of sight as much as he could although Loki felt his eyes on him anyway, but otherwise he was being left alone. 

As he walked through one of the gardens, though, the man seemed to materialize out of nowhere and nearly run him over, knocking him to the ground. 

“Hey, sorry man!” he called out, reaching out to help Loki up off the ground. “Wasn’t watching where I was going. Had something on my mind.” One thing that Loki noticed was different here was that, if possible, Tony Stark was speaking even faster than he had before. He hadn’t been aware a human could move his lips so rapidly. 

“Some things never change,” Loki muttered under his breath, not even realizing that he had spoken aloud. 

“Ah, so the silent one does speak!” Tony called out, grinning. He looked off in some direction, shouting, “I made him talk by running him over!” He then looked back at Loki, pulling him up off the ground. “Everyone here was certain that either your tongue had been cut out or you were just one of those silent and crazy types. Guess it’s the latter. By the way, I’m Louis Gooden, diagnosed schizo, whatever the hell that means. Been here for two years is all I know, and FUCK me am I getting sick of this place already.” Loki was certain that he had said all of that in one breath. 

“Why is everyone going by the wrong names in this place?” Loki asked, genuinely curious. “Is this some part of my punishment?” 

Tony just shrugged. “Wouldn’t know in the slightest. Some nights I think I’m trapped in an alternate reality, too, but then they shove medication down my throat and I think those are just delusions, but then I start hiding the medication underneath my pillow and start thinking it again. Part of being here, though. You usually can’t tell reality from fantasy. Docs are supposed to help with that, but some days I think they make it worse.” He grinned. “Call me whatever you want. Maybe one of the voices in my head will already answer to it and we’ll already be set. Could be OK.” 

“I would call you what I want either way, but it’s better that you accept your true name, unlike the rest of these cretins,” Loki said to him. “Tony Stark, that’s your name. Memorize it and remember it, because that’s the best that I’ll ever address you as.” 

Tony tilted his head to one side, almost looking like he was listening to another conversation for a moment. “Yeah, Tony works. Tony’s great. I can work with Tony.” He ran his fingers through his already messed up brown hair. “Nice to have someone around that knows that this place is full of shit as well. Most of the people here are boring. They just accept stuff as it is and I just don’t get it! Why not question everything around you? What, doctors are supposed to be above lying? Doctors lie more than anyone!” 

Loki leaned closer and examined Tony for a moment. “Where is the bit of machinery that is supposed to be on your chest?” he asked, tapping on Tony’s chest where he remembered the device being, the device that had refuted his scepter in New York in what seemed like both a lifetime ago and yesterday. 

That seemed to snap Tony out of his doctor rant. “How’d you know about that?” he asked. “Maybe you really do know me. No, it’s on the inside,” he said, yanking down the wife beater to show the five inch, vertical scar on his chest. “Something inside me that keeps my heart beating in regular intervals. I was born with some heart defect. Can’t remember for the life of me what it is right now, though. One of the pills that they give me makes it hard for me to remember things. I got to quit taking it again.” 

It seemed that, even in this hell that he had been placed in, they couldn’t get rid of the problems with Tony Stark’s heart, whatever they had been before. Loki actually didn’t know. He had just realized that Tony’s device before had prevented him from getting to the man’s heart. 

“So man, who are you anyway?” Tony asked him. “I know that the name everyone told me you have is Jeremy Elder, but if you’re saying that MY name is wrong, then yours has to be, too, so what is it?” 

Loki grinned. Even if it was Tony Stark, he was relieved that someone was finally willing to believe him. “I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose.” 

OoOoOoOo

Jeff Smith, the orderly who had been told to watch Jeremy Elder like a hawk, pulled out his cell phone and called the doctor’s office that was in charge of Elder’s therapy. “Hey doc,” he said into the phone, “figured that you’d be happy to know that your newest patient finally decided to talk to someone.” 

“That’s good,” Dr. Godfrey replied. Jeff could swear that he could hear the smile in the doctor’s voice when he spoke. “Who is he talking to?” 

“One of the schizophrenics...Louis something or other,” Jeff said. He didn’t keep up with everyone’s last name, but he knew all of the patients on sight. 

“Well, he could have picked a better person to open up to, but anyone is better than him sitting around just staring at people or attacking them, I suppose,” Godfrey remarked. “And he didn’t attack Louis or anything?” 

“Nah, he just talked to the guy,” Jeff told him. “Color me amazed, too. I figured if he was going to stab anyone, it would be the one that can’t shut up for the life of him.” He grinned. “You want me to still keep an eye on him for now?” 

“Yes,” Godfrey said quickly. “If he can open up to one person, maybe we can figure out why and help him open up to others. His mother is quite insistent that we find a way to get her ‘baby boy’ home as soon as possible. I don’t see that happening for a while, obviously, but any progress to report to her will make her stop calling so damn much.” 

“Yeah, doc, I can imagine that being a pain in the ass,” Jeff remarked. “I’ll let you know if he does anything else weird,” he said, hanging up the phone and putting it back in his pocket. Jeremy and Louis were still talking, and he could hear Jeremy still insist that he was some Norse god. Damn, of all the weird things to pick, he couldn’t even pick a recognizable god, like Thor? Everyone knew Thor. Then again, Jeremy was a little skinny to be a Thor...


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

"Reality is that thing that doesn't go away when I stop believing in it" Philip K. Dick

Loki hated to admit to the fact that he was almost enjoying Tony Stark’s company while stuck in this prison. If anyone asked him (which they seemed to do, constantly), he would explain that it was only because the rest of the people in this place were so damn intolerable. However, he tended to usually just sit during his ‘sessions’ and continue to not talk to any of the doctors. He found them to be especially moronic. 

He was already losing track of time in this place. When you stared at the same few walls every day, it was easy to forget just what day it was supposed to be. His best guess was that he had been here for over a month. It was in the morning time when he was dragged off for a personal meeting with a doctor, one William Rankins, whom Loki knew to truly be Phil Coulson. He had to meet with this bloody man several days a week, and spent most of his time with his arms crossed over his chest and staring off into the distance. 

“Jeremy, why do you spend most of your time here not talking to me? We know that you’ll talk to other patients,” Coulson said to him. “Do you hold some ill will against the doctors?” 

Loki didn’t say anything right away, looking down and checking his fingernails. He was usually so particular about his appearance, but he had let himself get dirty here. It was hard to keep his nails clean. “Why won’t you people allow me to keep up my appearance? My nails are filthy,” he grumbled. 

“Jeremy, we’re trying to talk about things that are more important than your nails right now,” Coulson told him. He set down the pen that he was holding onto his desk. “I know that you’ve started talking to Louis Gooden. He seems to be the only person here with whom you’ve held more than one amicable conversation.” 

“You mean Stark,” Loki corrected. “He’s the only person here who isn’t a complete moron.” Stark was the only one who was willing to believe him, that seemed smart enough to understand that this reality was a lie. He wondered why Stark was seemingly stuck here with him. Everyone else seemed to completely believe the lie but them. 

In addition, everyone else here thought that they were crazy. 

“I’ve noticed that, when you do deign to talk to other people, sometimes you call them different names,” Coulson continued. “Why is that?” 

Loki sighed, squeezing his fists shut. “Are you blind or just stupid?” he snapped, slowly cocking his head actually to look at Coulson. He wondered if there was a scar on his chest from where he had stabbed him before, in that Helicarrier. “Do you really not remember anything from before? Nothing at all?” 

“I’m sorry, Jeremy, but I don’t know what you mean,” Coulson told him. 

“STOP CALLING ME THAT NAME!!” Loki yelled, jumping up from the chair he was sitting in. “You don’t remember me at all? Remember what I did to you? Then maybe I will have to remind you, Phil Coulson!” He jumped onto the man’s desk, not paying any mind as he pushed his chair back to get away. Loki snatched the pen off Coulson’s desk, leaning forward and slamming it into his chest. “Do I still lack conviction, Phil Coulson?” He grabbed the now screaming man by his shirt, pulling him closer. “Now you will always remember my name, and it’s Loki.” 

He didn’t even hear the orderlies run into the office, grabbing his arms and pulling him off the desk, forcing him to let go of Coulson. When he was slammed against the floor, he looked up to see Clint Barton of all people standing above him. “You look much different when you’re not under my control,” Loki commented with a grin as he looked up, letting the archer hold him down. He had made his point. There was no need to fight and get up. “You looked better that way.” 

“Damn, you’re a fruitcake,” Barton said, grabbing Loki so that he could pull him out of the room. 

Loki could see that someone was helping Coulson. “I would suggest getting my name right next time, Coulson,” Loki said with a manic laugh as he was taken from the room. His laugh could be heard all over the building, though. 

OoOoOoOo

“Doctor Godfrey, we can’t keep having disturbances like this,” Dr. Thomas Jones, the head administrator of the hospital, said as he looked at the younger doctor sitting in front of him. “Jeremy Elder needs more care than our facility provides.” 

Godfrey ran his hand through his messy dark hair, sighing. “Dr. Jones, his mother gives A LOT of money to the hospital. She’s insisting that he stay here so that she is close enough to come visit him.” Not that he was usually one for these sorts of things, but he earnestly believing that he could help Jeremy Elder if given enough time. 

Dr. Jones looked at Godfrey steadily with his one good eye. “I understand that you think you can help this young man, but he’s demonstrated time and again, starting with his own brother, a propensity for violence. The only way that I think we could keep him around here is to dose him full of sedatives, and that isn’t exactly going to ‘help’ him, don’t you think?” 

“I understand where you’re coming from, I really do,” Godfrey said to him. “Let me try one more doctor. She’s an old colleague of mine. She works at a nearby hospital, but I think she could really do good work with him.” 

Jones’s face was a blank slate as he seemed to think on it for a moment. “If you really think that she can help, then call her. One more incident, though, and we’ll need to ship him somewhere else.” 

OoOoOoOo

Loki didn’t think that they were ever going to let him out of his damn room. He was starting to wonder how hard it would be to break the window and climb out of it when one of the orderlies finally came and got him, walking him directly to another doctor’s office. The redheaded woman sitting inside was someone he recognized immediately, although he hadn’t seen her here up until this point. She had a pair of glasses perched on her nose, but otherwise Natasha Romanoff looked just as he remembered her. 

He stayed next to the door, knowing that there was at least one orderly standing on the other side of it, likely waiting for him to attack Romanoff as he had done Coulson. He was actually considering it when she finally spoke. “Please feel free to take a seat, Loki,” she said, motioning to the chair in front of the desk. 

He arched an eyebrow at her, as she was the first of any of the ‘staff’ of this place that had called him by his actual name rather than this ‘Jeremy’ nonsense everyone seemed to insist upon. “You know who I am?” he asked, keeping his guard up even as he did as she asked, slowly walking over and taking the seat she suggested. 

“I only know what I’ve researched,” Romanoff explained. “Loki, God of Mischief and Tricks from Norse mythology.” She leaned forward on the desk. “You stabbed my last colleague for getting the name wrong. I figured I should do some research before coming in to work with you.” 

Loki chuckled. This was definitely the Russian spy that he remembered. She was trying to placate him by calling him the name that he demanded, that he knew that was his. Still, if it helped him to get out of that damn room more, he was more than happy to play along, just a little bit. “What else did your research tell you?” he asked her. 

She picked up a notebook, reading off it as if she had made notes to bring. “You’re closely associated with fire and magic, a shape shifter, and can be either malicious or heroic, depending on the situation.” 

He sighed when she mentioned that he could occasionally be heroic. “Anything about me that may have been heroic died a long time ago,” he remarked, staring out of the window for a moment. “Long forgotten to ages past.” 

“Even the worst people have it in them to be heroic,” Romanoff said to him, writing in her notebook. “When was the last time you remember being heroic, Loki?” 

He shook his head, not wanting to discuss that. He pushed his fingers through his long dark hair, pulling his knees up to his chest. He rested his chin on his knees, staring off into the distance at the moment. “Why are you here, Romanoff?” he asked her. 

He didn’t notice her make note of the name that he called her. “To help you,” she said plainly. 

“If you want to help me, then get me out of this place. I’m not insane, I’m simply stuck here,” he explained. “How well would you react if you were being imprisoned?” 

“We’re holding you here because you attacked your brother,” Romanoff explained. “Your family feared for your sanity, Loki.” 

“The big oaf is fine,” Loki grumbled. “And I don’t just mean here. This whole place is just some...construct created by my adoptive father. You’re not a stupid woman. You wouldn’t have gotten to the place you have if you were. Do you not feel that this place, this existence is wrong?” 

She stared at him evenly for a moment, studying him before answer. “I’m sorry, Loki, but I don’t. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I do,” she said. “Tell me more about it. Maybe that will help me realize it more.” 

He nodded. Maybe the more people that he broke free of the unreasonable hold this place had on him, the more likely he would be able to escape. 

OoOoOoOo

Doctor Christine Donahue sat in front of Dr. Jones’s desk, sitting beside her old friend William Godfrey. He had called her here in an effort to gain some help for a patient, and she hoped that she could continue to do some good for them. 

“He’s convinced that he’s the Norse god Loki,” she said, looking down occasionally to her notes as she talked. “He believes that he’s being punished by his father, Odin, by being placed into a false reality. He seems to add people to his reality as soon as he meets them. One of your orderlies and I are super assassins who work for some agency called SHIELD, along with his doctor from before. He thinks that you,” she indicated Godfrey, “are a scientist who occasionally turns into this green rage monster that is capable of tearing apart cities, and that his friend Louis Gooden is a genius inventor who created a metal suit that he can fly around and fight crime in. It’s quite the complex universe that he’s created.” She looked up at Jones. “I’m sure that he’ll decide that you’re the head of the spy agency or something when he actually gets to see you.” 

Dr. Jones chuckled. “Crafty little fucker, isn’t he?” he asked. “It all sounds like he’s a kid who reads too many comic books or something.” 

Godfrey shook his head. “I went through his room before I brought him here. He had a lot of books, but no comics. He didn’t have any books on Norse mythology, either. Did he mention that he thinks that he’s adopted?”

Donahue nodded. “I had assumed that he was, that this psychosis developed from feelings from that and manifested.” 

Godfrey shook his head. “Both of his parents insist that he’s not adopted, and I even went behind their backs and researched his birth. He’s really not adopted. I suppose he may feel that way in comparison to his brother. This almost seems more complicated than a simple inferiority complex. He’s created an entire world inside of his head and adapted all of us to being in it. It’s amazing, really.” 

“Don’t think about writing a book about him just yet,” Jones ordered quickly. “We’ve only gotten through one session without him attacking anyone. Donahue, are you up for more?” She nodded. “Good, then it’s at least a start.” 

OoOoOoOo

It was after three sessions with the Russian spy before he was allowed to be outside of his room again. He supposed they wanted to see if he would attack anyone else, especially her. Despite the fact that he was certain that she didn’t believe him, it did feel nice to have someone that listened to him and didn’t call him by that stupid name that he had been given. 

When he was allowed to go outside and walk the grounds, it didn’t take long at all for Stark to find him. “I was fucking certain that they had shipped you off somewhere else after you attacked that doctor!” he said, seemingly happy to see him. “They brought in a babe of a doctor to talk to you, though. I should start stabbing doctors with pens if we can get more pretty ones like that around here.” 

“I don’t think that they will appreciate you stabbing doctors just so that you can get better looking ones, Stark,” Loki remarked with a slight smirk. He kept walking, assuming that Stark would simply follow as he headed to a bench, sitting down. Stark did follow, but he chose to pace in front of the bench rather than sit beside him. “How long was I locked away for?” 

Stark shrugged. “I don’t keep up with time very well,” he admitted. “I did stop taking the meds, though. Got all these ideas flowing through my head now. It really does feel like this place is one big piece of fake reality bullshit. How the hell do we get out of here?” 

“I am working on that, Stark,” Loki explained. If he weren’t used to Stark by now, he would find the man’s rapid fire delivery of anything he said annoying. Right now, he was putting up with it simply because he seemed to be the only person willing to see the truth. “You should talk quieter. I am still being followed.” He looked in the direction that he was sure Barton was in. The man was still good at hiding, even in this incarnation. 

“Yeah, fucking orderlies follow us everywhere,” Stark grumbled. “Seriously, though, we need to get the hell out of here. I tried telling my sister when she last visited me that this place was fake, and she just cried and said that I was getting worse. I think she’s a part of the conspiracy.” 

“You are right about one thing: we need to get out of here.” Loki wasn’t certain when he decided that he would be taking Stark with him when he escaped, but it had happened. Maybe he was just desperate for the company. For once, a person hadn’t pushed him away or thought that something was wrong with him, even if he had thrown the man through a window once. 

“Too bad you aren’t magical like you used to be,” Stark remarked. “Then you could just like, magic us out of here or something.” 

“No, that would be too easy,” Loki said. It would almost take the fun out of it. He had to admit one thing: this was the first real challenge that he had faced in a long time. He’d almost thank his father for that if he didn’t want to strangle the man on sight.


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Deplorable Fungus

Some days Loki did wonder if he was truly just an insane young man trapped in this place. He knew who he really was, but sometimes little things seemed out of place. Sometimes his reflection in a mirror (when he was allowed near one, since these bloody simpletons seemed to expect him to break it and attack someone with a shard of glass) looked wrong, as his eyes would be blue instead of green and his hair would be the wrong color. Then he would blink and everything would be right again. Of course, when you were told that you were insane so many times, it would start to mess with your head. It just proved to him all the more that he needed to get out of here all the quicker. 

Despite the certain ‘eccentricities’ that Stark had acquired while being in this place, he still proved himself to be as sharp as ever. He instructed the man to watch the orderlies, figure out their habits as best as he could. There had to be some sort of loophole that would allow for them to escape this wretched place. 

That was something that would take a while, at least a week or two, to get down, as long as he could keep Stark’s attention focused on the task at hand, anyway. Therefore, for now, Loki had to continue to play the ‘good patient’ so that the staff wouldn't lock him away again. As much as he could, anyway. 

This included the medication that the nurses dutifully brought to him every day and night by the woman that Loki remembered being Maria Hill, even though her nametag said Joann Gentry and Stark insisted upon calling her Nurse Ratched. She occasionally tried looking in their mouths as if they were children to see if they were taking the medication, but Stark had long ago taught him how to hide it to get around her checks. Stark actually had once suggested that they try to bribe different orderlies with their medication and escape that way, but Loki couldn’t imagine someone wanted half swallowed medication. Then again, there were many things of this realm that he didn’t understand. 

After this particular round of medication, Loki asked Stark, “Just why do you call her ‘Nurse Ratched’? I do not understand that reference.” He remembered Stark once calling him ‘Reindeer Games,’ so he knew that the man just enjoyed making up names for people. 

“You don’t know One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” Stark asked him. Loki shook his head, gesturing for him to continue. “It’s a book that takes place in a mental asylum, much shittier than the cushy place we’re at here. Nurse Ratched was a wicked bitch of a head nurse that made all the patients lives miserable. What’s her face? Gentry or whatever it was that you called her, she’s actually nowhere near that bad, because Ratched made some kid kill himself, but I like pissing her off because she has the best ‘blank but obviously still angry’ faces.” Stark grinned. “Plus she’s kinda hot in that ‘I can kill you in ten different ways’ way.” 

“You really do only think about one thing, don’t you?” Loki asked, smiling despite himself. 

“Oh, one of the first things that I’m gonna do when I get out of here is get laid, man,” Stark said quickly. “There’s no fucking doubt about that. I thought about going after a few people here, but, other than your doc and Miss Head Nurse, ain’t no one really worth the effort or the trouble.” Stark smirked. “I wonder if she lives up to that name, ‘Head Nurse’?”

Loki snorted. “I’ll give you my jello at dinner if you go and ask her that right now,” he told Stark. 

Stark laughed. “I’d have done it for free, but throw in some jello and I’m so there.” He jumped up off the sofa that they were sitting on in the common room, heading toward the nurses’ station. Loki could hear Stark ask just that, if ‘Head Nurse’ meant anything in particular, because he’d love to find out about her head skills, and Loki could still hear the slap even over the laughter of some of the other patients in the room. 

Stark came stumbling back. “I think she likes me,” he said with a grin, hand on one cheek. 

“Your Midgardian dating rituals confuse me greatly, if that means she likes you,” Loki commented, grinning just the same. 

OoOoOoOo

Today there was some sort of special event that involved a person coming in and reading to them. Loki didn’t understand why someone had to come and read to them. He knew that he was perfectly capable of reading himself, and he was sure at least most of the patients in this facility could do so as well. However, he was continuing to at least try and be a good patient so as to not get locked away, so he supposed he should attend this ‘reading’ and not put up too much of a fuss. 

When the volunteer reading showed up, Loki wanted to kill himself laughing. There had been one person missing from this little show that he was certain his adoptive father was behind, and now here he was, reading to them as if they were children: Steve Rogers, or Captain America himself. The man may not have been in his glorified American flag get up, but the pure bred American was easy to spot from a mile away. 

The book that he was reading was one that he had never heard of, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. It seemed to be about an alternate set of events that changed how World War II ended, instead with Japan and Germany winning instead of losing. Loki personally found it amusing that the Captain as reading a story about Hitler winning World War II, since he had basically once called Loki Hitler as well, but he supposed that this would have to be a private moment right now. 

It ended up not being Loki who caused trouble during the reading, though. Either Stark had read the novel before or understood where it was going, because, as Rogers got a few chapters into reading the novel, Stark started to laugh, that high pitched, slightly mad laugh that can instantly worry. 

“He’s reading us a book by an author who likes to play with the idea of alternate realities,” Stark said with a loud snort. “But he doesn’t even realize that THIS is an alternate fucking reality!” 

Loki slowly turned his head and looked at Stark. “Now’s not the time for big speeches, Stark,” he said quietly to the man. “You do not get to give the big speeches unless you are the hero, and here you are not.” 

“But I am! I’m still who I’m supposed to be, right?” Stark asked him. “If I’m the hero, then we’ve got to tell others this whole place is a lie! Someone’s got to believe us, right?” 

Loki shook his head, trying his damnedest to will Stark quiet with his mind. “I’ve been doing that the entire time that I’ve been here. It’s one of the reasons I got locked up in the first place,” he said to Stark. “That and attacking Thor, but he deserved it.” 

Just as an orderly came to check on Stark, he slumped down in his chair, either giving in to Loki’s logic or relaxing for some other reason. Loki looked up at the orderly. It wasn’t Barton, but one of the others that he vaguely remembered being an agent for SHIELD but whose name he wasn’t fortunate enough to learn. “He’s alright, just agitated,” Loki said to him, and, eventually, the orderly went away, seemingly content with that explanation. Once he was gone, and Rogers was reading again, he looked at Stark and hissed, “Keep quiet or you will get more pills shoved down your throat and locked up. Use the intellect that I’m told you have.” 

The rest of the reading went all right, and, despite Stark’s outburst, Loki found that he actually enjoyed the book that Rogers read. Stark had been right about it being about an alternate reality. He was also right that it was odd that a book about alternate realities was being read in an insane asylum, no matter how ‘cushy’ it was, as Stark claimed. Maybe someone was trying to send him a message? As if he hadn’t already figured it out, of course. He was a damn genius, after all. How could he not see what was going on around him? 

After the reading, they were allowed outside for one of the many ‘smoking breaks’ that this place seemed to give. Loki personally wondered if they were purposefully trying to encourage patients to smoke to shorten their lives. He was certain there were too many smoke breaks to be remotely healthy for a person. Still, he was happy to be outside of the asylum. 

Stark followed him out, sitting down on one of the benches and rocking slowly back and forth after pulling his knees up to his chest, feet on the bench. Loki studied him for a moment. “What is the matter with you?” he asked Stark. 

“I hate this place sometimes,” Stark muttered. “I swear places like this make the voices in my head worse sometimes. It’s like being locked up pisses all of them off and makes them attack me and make me want to scream.” Stark was almost talking too fast for Loki to follow. He was actually stumbling over a few of his words he was going so quickly. 

Loki said down next to him, and, despite his misgivings, wrapped an arm around Stark’s shoulders. “Calm down, Tony,” he said to him. “We’ll get out of here soon.” He wasn’t sure that Stark was going to hold it together much longer. He may have to move the plans forward. Loki wasn’t sure that he could get around alone out there, and he was pretty sure that he could correct Stark’s mental issues once he found a way to access his magic. He could almost feel it within him, but couldn’t do anything with it. 

Stark laughed. “You called me by the first name. Must mean you like me.” 

Loki pulled his arm away quickly. “You grow on people, like a fungus,” he protested. 

“Yeah, you want me, you know it,” Stark said with a grin. 

Loki slammed his fist against Stark’s shoulder, knocking him off balance. “Not everyone on this planet wants to sleep with you, you baboon!” 

“Yeah well, you once threw me out a window, and now we’re cuddling, so who wants who, huh?” Stark asked him, still grinning that insufferable grin. 

“You are a deplorable, filthy...” The insults dried on his tongue when he realized something. “I never told you about that.” He hadn’t. He had only explained the basics of who Stark was before. He hadn’t wanted whatever psychoses that he was stuck with here to warp them. 

“What? No, you stuck some magic stick of destiny against my chest and, when it didn’t work, I joked about performance issues and you tossed me out a window. I know I got that from somewhere,” Stark protested, turning and looking at him. Loki couldn’t help that, while Stark’s eyes here usually had a manic, unfocused look, right now they had that sharp, focused stare that he had when he originally met him in that tower the day the Chitauri arrived. “Wait, where the hell did I get that?” 

Loki thought on that for a second before grinning. “It means that whatever has us here might be starting to wear off,” he said with a laugh. “You’re starting to remember!” 

“Or my brain is just making stuff up and you’re feeding off it,” Stark said with a shrug, his eyes going back to his ‘normal for here’ look. “It’s a thing with delusional people. Well, I’m not delusional, and I really don’t think you are, but who the hell knows in this place?” 

“Just trust me, Stark. This is something I know,” Loki reassured him. 

“You threw me through a window! Why should I trust you again?” Stark asked, grinning again. 

“You grew on me like a deplorable fungus, remember?” Loki reminded him. “Plus, if you remembered something, it means you’re the strongest here. I’ve got to have something to work with.”


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four:

Despite Loki’s many worries about this place, he couldn’t deny that, with Stark coming forward with a memory, it meant that he wasn’t completely insane like many of these people insisted upon. While he was pushing forward quicker than he initially planned because of his worry over how well Stark’s mental health would handle this place, he also was rushing simply because he was excited. He looked forward to getting out of here and getting his second chance to take over this miserable realm.

It had taken Stark a bit, but he figured out a glitch in the running of this insane asylum. It seemed that they could get away during one of the laundry runs of this place. There were no gates around this place, but he could only assume that they were miles into the forest. It was likely it would take them awhile to get to any sort of civilization. Loki was fine with that, however. He could survive out in the wilderness for quite a long while. He wasn’t afraid of possibly taking care of someone else, as he couldn’t imagine that Stark had any real ability to take care of himself without someone around to take care of him, but he wouldn’t mind being pleasantly surprised and proven wrong on the subject.

They had to wait a week to catch the exact right laundry service coming. It seemed that this place used several. When the right time came, all that they needed was a proper distraction. Thankfully, a small building full of lunatics was quite the nice distraction in and of itself. All Loki had to do was get them a little…riled up.

It was after lunch when the staff of the asylum started to realize that something was wrong with many of the patients. It appeared that all of them were agitated for some reason or another. Loki feigned perfect innocence as he watched the others move around and try to contain the growing chaos. Two residents were at each other’s throats, quite literally. They were rolling around on the floor while their hands were around each other’s necks. While several orderlies dealt with them, Loki grabbed Stark, who was actually sitting by and cheering one of them on like it was a licensed fight, and headed toward where he knew their ability to escape would be.

“Oh come on!” Stark snapped as Loki pulled him away. “I wanted to see which one of them killed the other first!” He then looked at Loki. “What did you do?”

“And just what makes you think that I had something to do with everyone’s increased agitation?” Loki asked with an innocent smile as they moved. He was thankful that they were allowed to wear their own clothing here rather than some sort of hospital garb. At least they wouldn’t stand out too badly if someone noticed them wandering outside of the grounds. Right now, they needed to blend in as well as possible. “However, I might have laced some of the food in the cafeteria with methamphetamines that I stole from the nurses’ station.”

Stark grinned as the quickly moved along. “You are the devil, you know that?” he said, laughing still as they waited. They had to wait for the right moment while people were loading the laundry truck, when no one was watching, and slip out quietly. Of course, it would help a lot of Stark would stop laughing so as they might not draw attention to themselves.

“I am the god of mischief,” Loki corrected, reaching his hand up and covering Stark’s mouth. “Now keep quiet, or I’ll come up with a clever and painful way to silence you.” When Stark nodded, he moved the both of them into the shadows as they waited. When the right moment came, he tugged on Stark and led him away, using their moment of opportunity to get outside and head around the laundry trucks, silently slipping around before finally getting off the grounds. The actual escape felt like it was far easier than it should be, but it had taken weeks in watching the place and figuring out the perfect time to slip away. The more you planned for something, the less time it took actually to do it.

Once they were off the grounds, Loki decided that they should move for a while before taking any sort of rest. The more distance that they could put between them and the asylum, the better off that they would be. He knew that they would likely be spending at least one night in this forest, but he didn’t mind that. He could hunt if the need for it was there.

Loki made them move until it was nightfall, despite several complaints from Stark. When the sun set and they finally did rest, Stark actually collapsed against a tree, and seemed to be nearly spent completely of energy. Loki moved down so that he could face Stark, studying him for a moment. “Are you alright?” he asked him.

Stark looked up at him, grinning. “Other than exhausted and starving, sure,” he commented lightly. “I guess I didn’t eat whatever it was you spiked, because I could sure use some of that energy right about now.”

“I made sure that it was something that you would not eat,” Loki explained. “I did not want you even more agitated than you already are.” He straightened his form. “I will find you food and water. Stay here and rest.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Stark said breathily, giving him a half assed salute as well.

Loki walked a little further into the forest. He could hunt, but tonight might be better for foraging. He had no weapon to hunt with, or even knife to clean any kill with. After some searching, he managed to find some nuts and berries, and then found a nearby stream. He had nothing to carry water with, so he’d need to bring Stark back to it. After the man had eaten, he might be in good enough shape to come and get the water. It wasn’t too far away.

When he brought the food back to Stark, he inhaled everything that he had been given. Of course, they had burned a lot of energy in what they had done. Loki did not need the same amount of food that Stark seemed to need, but the man constantly put off nervous energy. He needed constantly to refuel. Once they were done eating, Loki studied Stark for a moment. “Are you able to go and get some water?” he asked. When Stark nodded, Loki helped him up, leading him toward the river that he had found.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t sanitize this in some way?” Stark asked, even as he bent down and cupped some water, bringing it up to his lips.

Loki did the same, starting to drink his fill. “I do not taste anything off about the water.” Then again, he understood that he was immune to at least most things that would make a human like Stark sick. “Try to not indulge yourself too much, just in case.” He did not need Stark to be sick right now. He needed the man to be in tip top shape. Even if he did not have his full memories right now, he still knew more about this world and how to get around than Loki did. His previous experience hadn’t exactly taught him the ins and outs of Midgard. He would learn them soon.

“It’s best to stay beside a source of water for the night,” Loki said, listening to try to make sure that no one was near them. With the chaos of the asylum as he had left it, he wasn’t even sure that they would notice them being gone until they were all sent to bed. That still gave them a few hours. He was simply grateful right now that it was warm enough that they wouldn’t have to worry about hypothermia. Well, he’d never have to worry about such a thing, but he knew that Stark would.

Once he finished with the water, Stark moved back against a tree, wrapping his arms around himself. After a moment of thinking about it, Loki sat down next to him. “I apologize if I do not provide much warmth, Stark. I’m…cold natured, I think you would call it.”

“Probably should have thought to pack a bag or something,” Stark muttered, but his voice was good natured, with no malice in it. “My sister lives near here. I think that we should stop by there, at least for some supplies.”

“My, Stark, you sound quite clearheaded for a lunatic,” Loki said with a wry smile.

Stark snorted, rubbing his eyes. “I think whatever they were dosing me with is starting to wear off,” he told Loki. “I haven’t had my afternoon or night dose.”

“I almost wonder if what they were giving you was making you worse rather than better,” Loki observed. He knew that Stark alternated between taking his meds and not, but he doubted that he ever went long enough without taking them for everything to clear his system. He seemed to change his mind by the day whether or not he would take whatever he was being given. Loki, however, had never taken the pills that the doctors and nurses tried to shove down his throat. There were only a few times that he’d had anything forcibly given to him (usually when he attacked others). It was those times that he almost doubted himself.

Almost.

“Maybe when that junk clears your system, you will remember more,” Loki suggested. He wondered if the two of them were being drugged with something or another that was repressing their memories, possibly making them more mentally unstable as well. He truly had no idea just what SHIELD was capable of doing to them.

OoOoOoOo

It had been a desperately long night at the asylum. No one could quite figure out what was going on, other than it seemed like the patients had lost their minds even more than usual. Over the evening, several of them had attacked one another, and at least two had serious enough injuries to require taking them to the hospital, which was a twenty minute drive. During all of the chaos, several patients had disappeared, and, at first, the staff thought that they had rounded everyone up. 

Dr. Thomas Jones was sitting at his desk in his office. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night, but this was one of those days where you had to put in the extra time. He had called his wife earlier, let her know what was going on, but he was still sure that he was going to hear an earful when he got home. He could swear that he felt the empty space behind his eye patch aching like it was only recently that his eye had been jabbed out with a pencil, not the many years that it had actually been. 

He had preparing to get his bottle of Jack Daniels out of his desk when there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” he called out with a gruff sigh. All he wanted to do right now was unwind before heading home. This night couldn’t possibly get any worse. 

He should have known better than to think that. The head nurse, Joann Gentry, walked inside, shutting the door behind her. For someone who was usually so well put together, today her hair was falling out of the bun that she usually kept it in, and her clothes were uncharacteristically rumpled, and she was still one of the least rough looking staff members that he had seen. “Sir, we have a problem,” she said, standing in front of his desk. 

“Take your problem and shove it,” he muttered under his breath, then waved his hand. “Sorry, been a long day. What is it?” He looked up at her, trying to give her a reassuring smile, but it came out more like a grimace. 

“We have two escapees, sir,” Gentry told him. “We thought that we had rounded up all of them, but it seems that Elder and Gooden have slipped through the cracks.” 

He wanted to slam his head through the desk. Maybe if he knocked himself out, he would wake up and realize that this entire day had been a nightmare. Life didn’t work that way, though. “They couldn’t have gotten too far,” he said, biting back a curse. “Round up who you can and start a search for them.” 

Gentry nodded, and she headed back out of the room, closing the door behind her. “Mother fucker,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing his one good eye for a moment before picking up the phone, dialing the one number that he hoped that he’d never have to dial when he agreed to take on this job. When his call was answered, he only said five words before hanging up, but they were the five words that he hoped to never have to say. 

“We have a code green.”


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five: 

Stark had said that his sister lived nearby, but he hadn’t known exactly how close it was. However, he claimed that his sister had picked the hospital because it was so close to their home. It only took the two of them two days to get to the grounds of the ‘Gooden’ estate, and Loki at least thought that was a short time. Stark had complained the entire time. 

“Fuck me, man, I think my blisters have blisters,” Stark complained as they walked up to the home. Stark had told Loki that there would be no one home, as his sister worked at the family’s company during the day. From what Stark had jabbered on about since Loki had arrived at the hospital, it sounded like his family history was much the same. He was the genius son of another genius who had founded a company, his parents had died in a car wreck when Stark was in his twenties, and he and his sister Lauren had ran the company together until his ‘mental breakdown’ that Loki was starting to suspect was entirely manufactured. He wasn’t sure if this world was a construct or if everyone but he and seemingly Stark were playing along with an act, but he would know soon. Now his sister ran the company, and she spent much of her time working at it. 

“Then we need to find you better shoes,” Loki explained. Thankfully, Stark knew where a key to the home was hidden, so they had been able to get inside with ease. The house seemed empty, which surprised Loki a little, as he had expected the ‘Gooden’ family to have an army of servants or something. 

“Or we could just steal one of the cars here. I have tons,” Stark explained, leading Loki up to his suite of rooms. “I don’t think I have anything that would really fit you. You’re tall and kind of lanky, while I’m...neither. I don’t know, maybe we can cobble something together.” 

Loki sat on the man’s bed and looked around. This place was made with the most expense that could be thrown at it, it seemed. Not that he minded. Loki was a prince, after all. He was used to living in luxury. He also did not expect Stark to live any other way, whether with his real memories or not. “I can continue wearing these clothes if you do not have anything,” Loki told him. “It matters not.” 

“You’re shabby looking now. Of course it matters,” Stark told him, opening up his closet and starting to pull out clothes. Stark had likely not been here in months, but it seemed that nothing had been moved around since he was last around. He knew where everything was, after all. “If we’re escaping, we’re going to do it in style. Besides, if I don’t have anything here, I’ll just buy you something. I’ve got money stashed all over the place. No more hiding in the woods for us!” 

Loki wanted to protest that they should keep a low profile during their escape, but he knew that he didn’t relish the idea of spending another night in the woods, either. 

“Well, I’m going to shower. Spending two days in the woods isn’t exactly good for the skin,” Stark said with a grin. "You should have one after me. You smell." Stark managed to dodge a pillow that Loki grabbed and threw at him. "Hey! Don't get mad because I'm telling you the truth, oh God of Lies! You smell as if you've been camping, which we kind of have been doing, but it doesn't smell nice. Enjoy the awesome showers and be grateful." With that, he disappeared into the bathroom, and Loki lay back onto the bed, making himself comfortable.

He had to admit to himself that he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. He knew that they were near New York City, and, if they really did take one of the cars like Stark suggested, they could get their easily. He supposed that they could get a hotel room while he figured out a way to restore Stark’s memories fully. Loki knew why he had likely been sentenced to this...drudgery of a life, although he wasn’t sure how long he had been at this until he had seen through it, but why had Stark? He was in the insane asylum along with him, so he must have done something, but Loki couldn’t think for the life of him what Stark would have done. Hadn’t he ‘saved the day’ and all? Is this what they did with their heroes? On the other hand, were there still things that even Loki himself wasn’t remembering? He didn’t feel any gaps in his memory, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there. Odin was a powerful magic weaver himself. Loki would do the same spell to himself just in case. 

By the time Stark was done with his shower, Loki had managed to find some clothing in the stack that Stark had pulled out that would fit him. Despite them being almost a foot difference in height, he amazingly had some pants that were long enough to do. As Stark said, he could always buy better ones later. Stark smiled when he came out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist. “Help yourself, Loki. Still got plenty of hot water in there.” 

Grabbing the clothing he had picked out, Loki headed into the bathroom, nearly knocked back by the amount of steam in the room. Once he adjusted, though, the room wasn’t that bad, and soon Loki was in the shower, relishing at the feeling of hot water over his skin. He took longer than needed, finally coming out dressed, the still wet tips of his hair soaking the back of the shirt that he had put on. He really needed to cut the hair soon. It was starting to get in the way of everything. 

Loki was amazed to find that Stark wasn’t in the room when he came out, although he heard voices coming from downstairs. One of them was female, although he didn’t recognize it immediately. It was only when he poked his head out of the bedroom door that he got to see who it was, and he was very surprised. 

He could see Stark arguing with a red headed woman quite loudly, and he realized that Stark’s ‘sister’ here was none other than Pepper Potts, whom, if he remembered correctly, had been his girlfriend before. That almost seemed like a mistake, unless there was something that he wasn’t remembering. Loki stayed back for now, simply listening to the argument as it took place. 

“What are you even doing here, Louis?” Potts yelled. "You're supposed to be at the hospital! How did you even leave?"

Stark waved his arms around. “It doesn’t matter how I got out! I don’t need to be there, anyway! Why are you so damn insistent on locking me away, anyway! I know you hate running the company, so it can’t be that!” 

“I want you to stay there because it’s for your own good!” Potts told him, her eyes pleading for him to listen. “You’re not well. You’re sick!” 

“I’m not fucking sick! I had a situation, I rested, and now I’m better!” Stark snapped back at her. “Why the ever loving fuck are you so persistent on this, Pepper?” 

It seemed that Stark didn’t even realize that he had called his sister by the wrong name right away, but Potts certainly had. She froze, completely caught off guard for a second before snapping back. “It’s Laura, Louis! If you’re calling me the wrong name, then you really need to be back at the clinic.” 

Stark’s mouth dropped when he seemed to realize what he had called her. “No it’s not...your name is Pepper...well, Virginia, but I’ve never actually called you that...” Stark grabbed at his hair, pulling on it. “Fuck! What the hell is going on, Pep? Why the hell is this happening?” 

Pepper covered her mouth, looking like she wanted to cry, although Loki wasn’t sure if she was still acting or if it was because she had been caught in a lie. “We’re only doing this for your own good,” she half said, half sobbed. 

“Yeah, I keep hearing that, but sometimes I wonder if it’s my best interests being taken into account here or if something else is going on,” Stark snapped, turned and heading back up the stairs. “I swear to god, if you call that hospital I’ll never talk to you again.” 

Loki managed to duck back into the room just before Stark came up, storming into the room and tearing things apart as if he were looking for something. Sure enough, Stark pulled out two large bags, one empty, and one full of such a large quantity of cash that Loki couldn’t even count it off hand. 

Loki stayed silent while Stark moved about the room, grabbing clothing and such and shoving them into the empty bag. “You know, for being the God of Lies, I’m pretty sure that you’re the only one that hasn’t lied to me about anything,” Stark said under his breath. 

“Sometimes the truth can do more damage than a lie,” Loki said quietly. “The best know which to use in which situation.” 

“I’d still rather know the truth,” Stark said, zipping up the bags and tossing one to Loki and putting the other over his shoulder. “Yeah yeah, truth hurts, but being lied to feels like shit. I’m starting to wonder just who I really am.” 

“As do I, sometimes,” Loki admitted as he followed Stark, who opened the bedroom door and walked out of the room. He had his moments in the asylum where he honestly wondered if he were just the crazy young man that the doctors claimed he was. Now he thought that it had something to do with the medication that was occasionally shoved inside of him. Whether it made him sane or clouded his mind, though, well, they would all see soon enough. 

OoOoOoOo

Loki wasn’t sure where Ms. Potts was, but the home was empty when they came back out and left, Tony grabbing one of the many cars in the garage before pulling out and leaving with Loki in the passenger seat, their bags in the trunk. “So, where are we heading?” Stark asked him as he drove at speeds that would make most people very nervous. Loki even felt his stomach move in odd ways when Stark too curves too sharply. 

“New York City, somewhere that we can disappear into without being easily found,” Loki said, watching as the trees moved in a blur outside his window. 

“Who is she?” Stark asked him. “Laura...Pepper...whatever her name is. Who is she, really?” 

“Last I knew, she was your girlfriend,” Loki explained. “The idea that she’s posing as your sister is...disturbing.” 

“I thought you gods were into the incest thing,” Stark said, a slight smirk playing over his features. 

Loki glared, his eyes narrowed into slits. “Do I look Greek to you?” he asked. 

“Nah, you’re way too pale to be Greek,” Stark continued to blather. “But I don’t get those feelings from her. Yeah, I know, memory can’t be trusted right now, but I still don’t really get those feelings either way. Maybe something changed?” 

“Obviously a lot changed, Stark,” Loki pointed out, staring back out the window. “I’m personally curious as to why you were locked up with me, and not another doctor or something ridiculous in that place.” 

Stark just smiled. “Maybe I’ve been a naughty boy,” he said, laughing. “I’ve never been all that good at following rules, after all. Maybe I decided to have some fun with our resident God of Mischief.” 

Loki rolled his eyes, but the thought had occurred to him. Had Stark helped him in some way? He had no memory of it, but he was becoming more and more sure that his memory had been tampered with as well. 

OoOoOoOo

They had disposed of the car when they got into the city, as Stark of all people thought that it might have a tracking device on it somewhere. He really was sounding more and more like the Tony Stark that Loki had known of before. He doubted that the babbling madman he had first met would have thought of something like that. Tracking devices in his shoes, maybe, but not something that logical. They had eventually settled on some motel room, not quite up to Stark’s standards, but Loki had to remind him that, if people were looking for them, the first places that they would check would be the nicer hotels in the city. 

Loki had made a short trip out, both to get them food, and to get ingredients for the spell that he knew of that would allow for him to check for altered or hidden memories and release them. It hadn’t taken him long to find what he needed. He realized that he was familiar with the area that they currently resided. There had to be memories that were hidden from him as well. His ‘alter-ego’ wasn’t even familiar with this area, so he couldn’t even blame it on that. 

When he returned to the motel room, he found Stark sitting on the bed, watching the television. “Well, we’re not on the news, so that’s a good sign,” Stark said, watching Loki as he shut and locked the door behind him. “You sure you know what you’re doing with this magic stuff? You’re not accidentally going to turn me into a butterfly or make me think that I’m a dog?” 

“I’ve been doing this since before you were born, Stark,” Loki explained with a sigh, pulling out the implements and ingredients that he needed. “I think I know what I’m doing.” 

“Famous last words,” Stark explained. “Or should I say ‘arf arf’?” 

Loki shook his head, but he was inwardly worried, since he was doing this to himself and not just Stark. There was just as much chance that he could do harm to himself as he could to the other man. However, if he thought on this too hard, it might stay his hand, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to have a full understanding of what was going on. 

He got Stark to sit down on the floor with him, candles lit and spread out in a circle around them. He handed a piece of paper to Stark with words spells out phonetically for him to say. It would be Loki’s magic doing the spell, but Stark had to be a part of it, too. He was doing a spell for two, so it was best for Stark to help out as well, even in this small part. 

As they spoke, Loki reached over and took Stark’s hand, holding it. He could feel the magic flowing between him and to Stark, and, by the way the other man’s eyes were widening, he could feel it, too. He had expected to feel something like electricity, but instead it was a soothing feeling, and, before he knew it, Loki was slumping toward the floor as the last few words left his lips. Through his half-lidded eyes, he could see Stark had drifted off as well, falling over beside him. Loki’s eyes widened as he met Stark’s, as suddenly he was remembering what had happened, what had happened after he had failed to take New York over. This wasn’t his punishment for doing that. Oh no, he had done something much more dastardly, in the eyes of others. He had converted one of their own to his side as well. He’d gotten their metal man to fly for him of his own free will. 

Moreover, from the look he could see on Stark’s face, he could see that he now remembered as well.


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six:

(Author’s Note: Now that Loki’s unlocked memories, we have to see them! The next couple of chapters will have plenty of memories for them to sort through. They will all be in italics. Also, we may finally get some Tony point of views!) 

_It had not taken Loki long to break away from the Asgardian prison. He honestly wasn’t sure if they simply weren’t prepared to hold a magic weaver such as himself or if the court of Asgard simply didn’t think that his crimes on Midgard were that terrible. They regarded the realm as backward, after all. Sure, Odin had sent Thor to come and get him, but he could have sent a lot more help against the coming army if he had so desired._

_He had simply disappeared from the cell one night. He had to wait for his magic to replenish before he could attempt such a thing. It had taken one cycle of the moon for him to be up to it magically and physically. The giant green brute had done more damage than he had wanted to let on. Still, he was very glad to finally be free._

_He had crisscrossed several realms before deciding to head back to Midgard. If anyone could immediately trace his steps, then he didn’t want anyone to be able to find him easily. When he went back to Midgard, he knew exactly where he wanted to go._

_Stark Tower still gleamed like a beacon in the night. Loki did see a certain beauty to the monolith. If humanity had but one saving grace, it was their mastery over their environment. From when Asgardians had last been in the realm over a thousand years ago to now, they had completely changed the landscape in ways that none could have imagined. It was quite impressive._

_The beacon drew him in, although he kept himself invisible at first. He lurked around and then inside of the tower. He liked that he could see Stark and the other ‘Avengers’ as they came and went and what they were doing. He watched as Stark meddled with different projects, although one that sucked away a lot of his time was working on the Chitauri technology that had been left behind. The magic that had powered it before was gone, so it no longer did anything._

_Finally, one day, Loki could lurk no more. He knew how to power the discarded technology, and it almost hurt him to not at least brag about it to the confused and increasingly frustrated Stark._

_“It’s too bad that none of the power remains in that weapons and crafts left behind,” Loki said, appearing behind Stark, who was bent over a work table, trying to force one of the Chitauri guns to operate. “I’m sure that SHIELD would love to work with a new weapon after losing the power of the Tesseract.”_

_Stark turned around, unconsciously pressing himself against the work table. “How did you get out?”_

_“It was an impressive cage they put me in, but not one built for me,” Loki told him, harkening back to what he once said to Fury. “Maybe one day they will learn.” He circled the table, eyes flickering down to the pulled apart weapon. “Have you figured anything out so far?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know, fingers pushing different parts around on the table._

_“You should know that I haven’t,” Tony snapped, already distracted enough by his puzzle to turn his back from Loki, looking at one of the parts on the table. “None of this shit works without anything around to power it all up.”_

_“And the fact that you can’t figure it out just burns you up inside?” Loki asked, voice rumbling in a smooth purr. “Now, the real question is, what will you give to find out just what it is that actually controls these things?” His fingers glided over a bladed weapon that also happened to shoot out beams of energy that could kill a man._

_“Certainly not giving anything for what you’re selling,” Tony said quickly. He was reaching for his phone, likely to call someone up here, let them know that Loki was around. “I can figure it out on my own; it’s only a matter of time.”_

_“That just shows how little you actually know,” Loki drawled, vanishing before Tony’s eyes, but not leaving. Stark did not have the equipment to sense his presence, he already knew that. He wasn’t concerned in the slightest that he would be detected, even as Tony dialed his phone._

_He continued to watch as Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers came into the room, listening as Stark described what had happened to him, what Loki had said. Oh this was going to be intensely fun. At least now he had a way to pass the time._

OoOoOoOo

Tony was the first to wake up from the magic induced haze. His mind was clearer than it had been in months, although those months felt like an eternity. His eyes opened, looking around the floor of the motel he and Loki had rented. 

_Loki._

The Norse God of Mischief was still half unconscious on the other side of the magical circle thing that he had created. Tony managed to push himself off the floor, only managing to not collapse immediately by grabbing onto the bed and hoisting himself upon it, sitting on the edge as he tried to collect his scattered thoughts. 

Did he really do all that he now remembered? It felt right, a lot more right than he really wanted to admit. It explained his current situation a lot, that he and Loki were both punished. The true question was what he was going to do now? Go back and grovel for forgiveness to the people that had locked him away? Oh no...Tony fucking Stark didn’t grovel to anyone. 

Tony leaned his foot across the floor and nudged Loki in the shoulder. The god awoke and opened his eyes, looking up at Tony. “Remember now?” Loki asked, pushing himself into a sitting position.

“Yeah, I remember,” Tony replied, shaking his head a bit. He remembered more than he thought he’d ever be able to talk about, but he didn’t want to go into that right now. What he wanted to do was go after the people who had imprisoned him. He wanted to make sure that none of this ever happened again.

OoOoOoOo

_Tony had nearly fallen over in a panic when Loki had appeared in his workroom. He had expected the God of Mischief and Lies to be locked away in some far off prison on Asgard, never to show his face here again. However, he had shown up in his tower and, not even an hour later, Thor had shown up to belatedly tell everyone that Loki had managed to escape his confines._

_He wasn’t sure what was going to win out inside of him, the fear and anger he had at the Asgardian, or the curiosity to find out if Loki really **did** know anything about the Chitauri tech that he was trying to figure out. All of the stuff had immediately been dead as soon as the alien army was defeated, apparently. Him sending that nuke through to blow up their mothership had made killed whatever was powering the army and all of their weapons. Bruce had done some dissection on the bodies left over, explaining that they were some sort of cyborg race, which explained why they all died, but it didn’t get him any closer to making the weapons or even the hovercrafts work. It was irritating as fuck and he didn’t know what to make of it. When the god wasn’t completely crazed, he was almost intriguing. Scary thought._

_Of course, he assumed that Loki was still at least mostly crazy, bt he didn’t have quite the same visceral anger that he’d had before when he came to Earth. Still, he was actually scarier when he wasn’t in that almost constant rage._

_“So, what are we going to do about your crazy brother on the loose?” Tony asked. After Thor arrived, they had all gathered around a table in one of the meeting rooms that he had in the tower. “I mean, you’re not just going to let him run a muck, are you?”_

_“I am not sure what this ‘muck’ you speak of is, but I intent to bring him back to Asgard as soon as I get a full location on him,” Thor explained, looking all of like a regal king as he sat back in his chair. “I do not want my brother to be of any harm to your realm.”_

_“Yeah, well, I don’t think he’s done any harm yet other than scaring the ever loving Jesus out of Tony,” Bruce said with a bit of a half smile. “We’re lucky in that, though. Who knows what might happen if he shows up again, though.”_

_Tony sat back, staying quiet as the others kept talking. What he wanted to know was why Loki had shown up in his workshop of all the godforsaken places? It would have left him a lot less conflicted if Loki hadn’t dangled the idea of him learning how to figure out the Chitauri tech in front of him, though. He **really** wanted to know just what it was that made that stuff work._

OoOoOoOo

Recently freed memories still floating through his mind, Loki couldn’t help but be a little amazed at Stark getting so easily used to what was going through his head. He was the more focused Stark that he remembered, though, and that was what he really needed at the moment. He needed the slightly manic genius, not the schizophrenic with sparks of genius that they had tricked him into being.

“So, what exactly are we going to do now?” Stark asked him, still mostly staring out the window of the hotel room. 

“Wouldn’t you like your tower back, Stark?” Loki asked him, smiling. “I don’t know what it’s being used for now, but I’m sure that you wouldn’t approve, since they took it from you.” 

“You don’t have to try and manipulate me to show me what a good idea it is to get my tower back,” Tony said with a smirk. Loki couldn’t help but laugh at his response. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d had a real ‘partner in crime’ so to speak, so this was different than he was used to. He was finding that he liked it, though. “I think that we need to at least figure out what the hell my tower is being used for now, don’t we?” 

Loki knew for certain that he wanted to know the goings on of the Avengers and what they did in that tower. He doubted that he was the only one. “Yes, that we do, Stark.” 

“Aren’t we well enough acquainted so that you can use my first name like a normal person?” Stark asked him, still grinning at him. 

“Ah, but you are thinking that I am a normal ‘person,’ when I am neither of these things,” Loki happily reminded him. “Still, I will call you Tony if that is what you truly prefer.” 

“I’m sure you can guess what I _prefer_ , but right now just calling me ‘Tony’ works just fine,” Tony replied with a bit of a leer. 

Yes, this ‘partnership’ was interesting and new indeed. 

OoOoOoOo

It didn’t take them long to vacate the motel and make their way toward Stark Tower, or whatever they may be calling it these days. It still stuck out like a beacon in the night to Loki, as much as it had when he first arrived back on Midgard. He could see that, by the possessive gleam in his eye, Tony still very much regarded the monolith as belonging to him, but the true question was how would they get to spy on the occupants within? 

“So, are you going to make me invisible, too, or what?” Tony asked, looking up at the Tower himself. He remembered now how Loki got around his tower all of the time now. 

“Do we really need to take that approach?” Loki asked him. 

“You know what? Just take me to my workshop. I think I know of a way around all this sneaking around bullshit,” Tony said after thinking on it for a moment. 

Loki did as he asked, reaching and taking Tony’s arm before teleporting him down to his workshop. As if on cue, all of the lights started to come on as soon as they were fully there, as if the room recognized Stark’s signature. 

“Come alive for me, kids,” Tony said, looking around the room with a grin. “Daddy’s home. JARVIS, you there?” he called out. 

“Yes sir,” the clipped, British voice answered him. “I am supposed to alert Ms. Potts if you manage to make your way back to the workshop without prior knowledge…” 

Tony cut him off quickly. “JARVIS, run protocol X14-3745, password Omega8732,” he said quickly, glancing around the room and grinning again as the AI responded. 

“Yes sir, all programs are now on lockdown and only accessible only to you and Mr. Loki,” JARVIS replied. 

Tony turned and laughed when he saw Loki’s confusion. “You really think I wouldn’t have set up some sort of backup in case something did happen?” he pointed out. “I had my company snatched out from under me once before, and I’m kind of a paranoid bastard.” He laughed. “OK, no ‘kinda’ about it. I’m just a paranoid bastard.” 

“I admit to being amazed that I have access as well,” Loki said to him. Tony could almost see on his face that he thought that he should have access to everything, but hadn’t expected to be given it so easily. 

“Yeah well, we’re doing this whole ‘take over the world thing’ together, right? Might as well really work as partners and all that bullshit,” Tony said with a grin. 

(Author’s note, pt. 2: I admit that this might get a bit confusing until all memories have been revealed, but they will be! Just make sure to hang in there, folks!)


	8. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness! NEVER expected this kind of response, but I'm pleased as punch. I at first posted this slowly over Livejournal, but it didn't get much attention. SO glad I came over here and decided to share it. I've been a lurker on this site for months before finally getting up the nerve to put anything up, and now I'm so happy that I did. 
> 
> I hope that you guys enjoy the new chapter!
> 
> Once again, the chapters are going to be a mix of old memories (explaining why Tony and Loki are working together in the first place) and current events. Italics will separate the two.

Tony figured that someone would likely be monitoring the Tower in some way. Hell, everyone had to be out looking for the two of them, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t prepared for that. He was pretty sure that people forgot just how fast his mind really worked. Bruce likely had some idea, since he was almost as smart, but the thing was, Tony thought on the idea of contingency plan upon contingency plan. He had known at some point that his tower and company would be taken out from under him again, and he’d put in contingencies to make sure that he could easily get it back. Now he had to contend with the idea that someone had been monitoring the Tower. They had to be, unless they were tremendously stupid, and just because he was smarter than they were did not mean that they were necessarily stupid. 

However, he was prepared for that, too. He was sick and tired of people fucking with him and thinking that they knew what was best and then forcing it upon him. 

Now the world would get to see what happened when Tony Stark was messed with. 

He was still standing in his lab, and, although he heard no voice and saw no movement, he knew that Loki was behind him, observing for the moment. 

He was still standing in his lab, and, although he heard no voice and saw no movement, he knew that Loki was behind him, observing for the moment. Everything was still waking up around him, coming to life and stretching their metaphoric limbs. He wasn't even sure how long it had been since they had last been active. Almost made him angry over that alone. Still, he had lots to be angry about right now. His computers and bots not having moved for months would just have to join the line.

One of his screens popped up in front of him, and he watched a video feed as security cameras showed that they weren’t going to be alone for long. Outside of the building, on the roof, he could see that Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton looking for a way to get inside. Part of the protocol that he enacted sent the building on lock down, so they would have a bit of a trial getting inside. Then again, they were spies, so he still figured that they might find some way of getting inside, to his irritation. 

“Looks like we have company,” Tony said to Loki. “Then again, I think I’d be more disappointed if someone didn’t show up to try and catch s. That would mean that we just weren’t loved one bit.” 

He heard Loki snort behind him. “I could do without the spy network trying to get inside, personally.” He could almost _hear_ they eye roll in Loki’s voice. 

“What? You wanna welcome them, then? Make them feel at home?” Tony suggested, grinning as he looked at the God of Mischief over his shoulder. 

He watched Loki crack his neck in one languid motion. “I think I can handle that,” Loki said, a touch of a grin gracing his features. 

OoOoOoOo

_Tony couldn’t help but feel paranoid after Loki’s little visit. Sure, security had been upped around the place, but he doubted that would exactly slow the god down. Moreover, a tiny part of him almost wanted Loki to show up again. He had hinted that he knew how to make the Chitauri technology work again, and, despite everything that he had been trying, nothing was working. If the bastard would actually SHOW him how to make this stuff work, he might actually be grateful. He was pulling his hair out over this stuff._

_Maybe that was why, when he was working in his shop late one night, when he felt a chill in the air and looked behind him, seeing Loki wearing that Cheshire cat grin, his hand stayed instead of looking for any way to signal the others in the building that Loki had shown up again._

_He had been blasting AC/DC when he god appeared, so, if Loki had made any noise, he wouldn’t have heard it, anyway. However, he had felt a chill in the air that made the hair on the back of his neck stand at end, and there Loki was. He wondered why the air would get cold, but filed that away as something to find out if he survived this encounter._

_“You know, I upped the security around here just so that you wouldn’t be able to do that,” Tony said, signaling to JARVIS to turn down off the music._

_“Actually, I doubt I’m registering to your security feed at all,” Loki said, reaching out of if to touch Tony, only for his hand to pass right through him. “The fun of magic is being able to get around all sorts of things, after all.”_

_Tony tilted his head, already more interested than afraid now. “Now how in the hell can you do that?” he wondered aloud, already reaching across and watching as his hand passed through Loki’s arm. It was just a hologram, but the technology outside of his own lab for that sort of thing was still awful._

_“Magic and science are more alike than you seem to want to believe,” Loki said, watching passively as Tony passed his hand through him a few more times. “Speaking of, I do believe I promised to show you how the Chitauri technology worked.”_

_“Why are you doing this?” Tony asked, finally pulling back and leaning against his workbench. Yeah, he felt a little safer that apparently, Loki wasn’t actually physically here, but he should still be contacting someone right now. Still, he wanted to satisfy his curiosity before he did anything like that. “What do you have to gain from showing us how this stuff works?”_

_“Who said that I was showing anyone but you?” Loki asked, grinning and showing his gleaming white teeth at Tony. If Tony didn’t know any better, he’d say that Loki’s teeth looked like razor sharp knives when he smiled. Not the most pleasant of ideas._

_“Do you really think that I’d keep something like this a secret?” Tony asked him. “Come on, Loki. If you think you know me at all, do you think that I’d be able to keep anything like this from others around me?”_

_Loki pursed his lips, seemingly thinking on that for a moment. On the other hand, it could have just been a ploy. Hard to tell when the person you were talking to was the God of Mischief and Lies, among other things. Yeah, Tony had started trying to do his homework about Loki. Thor wasn’t around at the moment to ask questions to and it seemed that SHIELD’s files were woefully lacking. Not that he was terribly shocked. Sure, SHIELD almost had a handle on things on this planet, but it seemed that they were still mostly flailing at anything from beyond the cosmos._

_“Maybe I will be showing you a way that will only work when I’m around,” Loki teased, smiling again. Yeah, probably had been a ploy to make Tony think that he was in control for a split second. Tony was ahead of Loki in one particular way: he was damn sure that he had NO control over anything that was going to happen right now._

_“Not really shocked by that,” Tony said quickly. “Now, what I’m wondering, what I’m REALLY wondering, is what you want for this knowledge. Come on, I sure as hell don’t think that you’re just gonna hand this information over to one of the people who helped to defeat your little try out takeover of Earth. What do you want, Loki?” Not that he figured he’d actually give anything. No, Loki would only want something bad, right?_

_“Smart boy,” Loki purred. Tony had to admit that Loki’s voice had a nice ring to it. “No…this is a trade, not a gift. I’m just not sure what it is that you have that I could want.”_

_Tony bristled, both at being called a ‘boy,’ even as he realized he likely was in just pure years on Loki, and at the idea that Tony didn’t have anything that Loki wanted. Despite the tiny voice in his head telling him to SHUT UP, he couldn’t quite stop himself. “You’d be amazed at just what I can do for you, Loki,” he said, then clearing his throat. “You know…if I wanted to.” He really needed to learn to keep his fat mouth SHUT one of these days, or it really was going to get him killed._

_Loki leaned closer, and, even though Tony knew that he wasn’t really there, he still pressed himself harder against the workbench in a vain effort to keep away from him. Loki still moved closer, almost a hair’s breadth from Tony and, although it seemed impossible, Tony could SWEAR that he could feel Loki’s breath on his face. It was also odd that, to him, Loki seemed to smell like fresh snow. “Oh I’m sure that you could,” Loki said, still grinning that maddening and frightening grin. “But I was trying to think of something…a little more tangible.”_

_Loki moved away, and Tony let out an embarrassing sigh of relief. He was pretty sure that, if these meetings kept up, his brain was going to totally fry and short circuit and he was going to die. “Do you think you can handle the idea of trading for a favor to be decided?” Tony offered, inwardly kicking himself for giving over something that could screw him over in so many ways, but both his own curiosity and the draw that he couldn’t quite deny to the god was making him speak, anyway._

_Loki gave one of those terrifying yet seductive grins again, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder if this was how Natasha’s marks felt right before she stabbed them in the neck while in bed. She wasn’t called Black Widow because she just wore black clothes, after all. She was a seducer and killer, and Tony had the definite feeling that Loki might be as well. “I think I can handle that, Stark,” he practically purred, and Tony knew that he was fucked with a capital F-U-C-K._

_Before he could even think of saying anything more, though, he heard a knock at his workshop door, and he turned toward it without thinking. When he looked back to see what Loki was doing (and to likely try to make him go away), he had already disappeared. The air was still cold, though, so Tony had the feeling that he might still be around, hiding somewhere._

_Clearing his throat, he tried to make himself sound normal when he called out, “Come in!”_

_It was Steve that walked into the room, looking like he was fresh from a workout, judging by the sweat still sticking to his face and arms. Yeah, he looked, and he had nursed something of a schoolboy crush on the hero since his high school years, but he’d never actually do anything about it. Well, nothing more than a one night stand. He wouldn’t even do THAT because he had Pepper, whom he had conveniently forgotten during his little talk with Loki. FUCK._

_“Hey, was wondering if you were going to join everyone for dinner,” Steve said, not even having the decency of sounding winded even though he had obviously just been doing some sort of workout. “Pepper ordered some Thai food and she already dragged Bruce out of his lab, so she said that I had the job of coming and getting you.”_

_God, this sounded too mundane to be true. Either this was a dream or his talk with Loki was some sort of fevered dream, even if the room still felt freezing to him. “Sure, just let me wrap some stuff up in here and I’ll be right up,” he said, shooting Steve a winning smile._

_Steve smiling back, giving him a nod before shivering. “Wow, what’s with keeping this place so cold?” he asked, rubbing his hands up his arms._

_“Machines run at peak efficiency in colder temperatures,” Tony said without even thinking about it. He waved at Steve as he headed off, breathing out a sigh of relief when the soldier walked through the door and left the area._

_“Not even letting your dear Captain know that the dreaded enemy is around,” Loki purred in his ear, causing Tony nearly to jump out of his skin._

_“Jesus FUCK don’t do that to me!” Tony snapped at him quickly, turning around and putting a good foot of distance between the two of them. “Someone needs to put a goddamn bell on you or something.”_

_“No need to be so jumpy, Mr. Stark,” Loki said, leaning backward against one of the other work tables. “Promise that I won’t bite…unless you ask.”_

_Tony shook his head. “OK, before you somehow cause my brain to completely short circuit, rules need to be laid out. I’m only giving you ONE favor for teaching me how the Chitauri technology works, and I’m not going to do anything that will either directly or indirectly harm any of my friends or teammates, deal?”_

_Loki actually seemed to think on that for a second. “Deal then, Mr. Stark,” he said. “Despite what you may think of me, I’m actually not around to kill any of you.”_

_“Well, I had a broken window and nearly a bashed in skull that said otherwise,” Tony grumbled. “Now, I’ve got a date with friends upstairs, so unless you’d like to explain why you’re suddenly hanging around my workshop like a creeper…”_

_Loki seemed to understand what he wanted. “Alright then, I’ll be on my way for now. I’ll come back tomorrow night to show you how some of the Chitauri technology works. Till then, Mr. Stark.” Loki bowed slightly before disappearing right before Tony’s eyes._

_Tony started the locking up of his lab, muttering to himself the entire time, “This is going to be the death of me. I just know it.”_

OoOoOoOo

Loki decided to take the subtle approach to going out after the hawk and the spider. It would be subtle for him, at least. He made sure that he was invisible, coming out onto the rooftop to observe them for a few moments, wanting to get an idea as to what their plans for them might be. 

“How does Fury even know that they’re here?” Barton asked Romanoff, eyeing the door that would lead them down a stairwell and likely toward the living quarters that Stark had once used. “They escaped. They could be anywhere. Besides, no one has been in this place for months.” 

Loki was happy to hear something resembling a timeframe. He had no idea how long he had been away, either locked in that ridiculous excuse for a mental asylum or being forced to live that lie of a life before. He still remembered all of the life that had he had been placed in, but he had no true idea how long he had spent in it. Time was tricky like that. 

“Where else would they go?” Romanoff asked. She had a point. Loki doubted that Stark would have listened to any insistence of going anywhere else, even if Loki had tried. The tower was his and his alone, and of course, he would demand to get it back under his control. Wanting what was rightfully yours was a sentiment that Loki understood very well. 

Before Barton could concede the merits and flaws of that idea, Loki thought that it would be a good time to appear. “As enlightening as this conversation really is, I’d suggest for the both of you that you leave,” Loki said, slowly appearing behind the both of them, mainly for dramatic effect. 

Both of them managed to hide their surprise when they turned around, but Loki could read them both well enough to see that he had caught them off guard. “It’s not often that someone gets the drop on me,” Romanoff commented as she slowly pivoted toward him. 

“Let’s just say that I’m returning the favor,” Loki replied, smile vicious. “As I was saying, go back where you came from if you value your safety.” 

Both spies instead leveled their weapons on him. “We’re under orders to bring you both in,” Barton told him. Loki could still sense the rage that dwelled within Barton toward him. 

“Too bad for you that’s not gonna happen.” It seemed that Loki wasn’t the only one who could ‘get the drop of them,’ so to speak, tonight. Stark had managed to get up to the roof and open the door while their backs were turned. Before either even had the chance to turn around, he managed to fire off something that looked like a gun, but, instead of bullets, little electrodes popped out and sent a surge of electricity through both of the spies, dropping them both to the ground. 

“What is that?” Loki asked, head cocked in curiosity. He wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen anything like it before. 

“Taser. Sends 10,000 volts of electricity. I altered it so that it can hit two people at once,” Stark said with a grin. “Handy in a non-lethal way. Didn’t seem fair to just kill them off the bat.” He paused before laughing. “Or fun, really.” 

Loki thought that Stark still looked a little insane when he said that, but he’d rather that than someone too worried about morals, now that he thought about it. Stark had always been chaotic in nature. It just seemed like somehow or another, he’d been pushed over the edge. 

“So, what to do with these two, then?” Loki mused aloud. 

Stark holstered the weapon in the waistband of the jeans that he was wearing. “Lock them up for now. I got a Hulk-proof cage down there that I KNOW they can’t get out of. When we think of something suitably fun, we’ll bring them back out.” 

Loki smiled. “Good enough for me.”


	9. Chapter 8

Loki wasn't shocked to find that there was a cage in the building similar to the one that Fury had on the helicarrier, although this one wouldn't be dropping out of anything. It was simply in the basement of the building where no one would hear the screams of the beast that should have been locked up in this cage. It was more just a place to lock away the beast until he regained control of himself and turned back into the bespeckled doctor. 

Today, however, he wouldn't be seeing the doctor/monster. Instead, he was seeing two spies tied back to back, still unconscious. Of course, while the two of them may usually be able to at least untie themselves, the ropes were reinforced with a magic spell that meant they would only come undone when Loki said the right words. Also, they would get tighter the more they fought against them. Just for an added touch. He wanted to see how long it took for them to realize that. Loki realized that he had a sadistic streak in him, but now seemed like a good time to indulge it some. 

"So, how long will it take for them to wake up?" Loki asked, watching the cage from across the room. It was too similar to the cage that he had been on in the helicarrier for him to relish getting too close to it, at least for right now. Maybe when they woke up, he might go closer, but not for now. 

Tony was typing away on one of his small portable computers, chatting away with his disembodied butler at the same time. "People that are tased can stay out for a few hours or even longer. Now, those two might stay out less. God knows what steroids or whatever SHIELD pumps into them on a daily basis." He cast a glance back toward the cage that the two agents were housed in. “JARVIS, their pulse rates and everything are alright, aren’t they?” he asked, almost absentmindedly. 

“Yes, sir. Both are at a normal rate,” JARVIS replied in his clipped, British tone. “I do not believe they will be waking up for another hour or so, however.” 

“Good. Wouldn’t want them to die or anything,” Tony said, going back to his little computer. “That would just be boring.” He grinned to himself as he kept typing. 

“And we wouldn’t want to deal with a bored Tony Stark, now, would we?” Loki asked with a hint of a smile. He really had no idea quite when he had become found of this human, but it seemed to have happened. Sorting out memories, both the fake and the real, took time, however. He was sure he’d remember the exact moment eventually. 

“A bored Tony tends to blow things up,” Tony replied to him. “Not gonna say if that’s on purpose or not, though. I think that question is part of my charm.” 

Loki finally inched closer to the cage, tapping on the glass. “Is there any way that we can wake them up?” he asked, actually tapping on the glass like a child standing in front of a fish tank. 

“We could shoot them up with adrenaline, but that might explode their hearts. Like I said, I don’t know what SHIELD pumps them full of,” Tony replied. “You’re supposed to be an ancient god. Have some patience.” He snorted. “Really never thought I’d be saying that to anyone.” 

“Sometimes being alive for so long will completely drain your patience,” Loki remarked, tilting his head as he stared at the slumbering duo. 

“What is it like to be alive for a thousand years?” Tony asked. “Always figured that I’d eventually find a way to get around the whole aging thing, but haven’t quite pulled it off yet.” 

“So sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Loki asked with a smirk. “It’s complicated. You can have endless patience for things, but also feel like you never have enough time to do what you want.” He felt that way sometimes because those around him seemed to age before his eyes. He and Thor would look the same for hundreds of years, but Tony would be gone much quicker, barely a blink of an eye. 

“Sounds a little twisted,” Tony remarked. “Still, I’ve got too much stuff to do to just go off and die in thirty or forty years.” 

Loki didn’t quite get how Tony could be so flippant about the idea that he should die in thirty or forty years, but humanity as a whole confused him sometimes by all seemingly doing just that. Another one of those curious things about humanity that he probably could spend a hundred years studying and still not understand, he supposed. 

Loki tapped on the glass again, and this time one of the spies within stirred, groggily opening his eyes and looking up at Loki’s grinning face. Loki stopped himself from laughing when he watched as Barton’s face tensed up when he saw who it was on the other side of the glass. “Sleep well?” Loki asked simply. 

“They’re going to realize that we’re missing,” Barton grunted toward him. 

“Well, that’s part of the fun,” Tony said. He had walked up behind Loki when he realized that Barton had woken up. “It can’t be a party without the full guest list, after all.” 

Barton fought against the bindings tied to his wrist, grimacing when they tightened around him. “You realize that I’m going to kill the both of you, right?” he asked, looking at the both of them. 

“I’d really like to know just how you’re going to do that from in there,” Tony said. “Glare me to death? Have fun trying that.” 

Tony turned his attention back to his computer for the moment being while Barton continued to struggle against his bindings until his hands were starting to turn purple from the lack of circulation. “I really thought that you were smarter than this, Hawk,” Loki said, smiling as he continued to watch. 

Barton snarled at him. “You don’t get to call me that,” he snapped. 

“The ropes tighten the more you fight against them,” Loki pointed out. “If you relax, it will be much better for you.” 

“Wasn’t that how it was under the mind control, too?” Barton asked, looking up at him. “Don’t fight it and it’ll be better? Thanks, but no thanks. I’m gonna get out of here. I believe I still owe you an arrow to the eye.” 

“It’s really too bad that you cannot learn your place,” Loki remarked, clucking his tongue. “Life would be so much simpler.” 

“Yeah, one of those Earth sayings: Rather die standing than live on my knees,” Barton said to him. “Earthlings are never ones for doing the simple thing.” Loki suspected that Barton would have said more, but then he was distracted by Romanoff starting to stir, and Loki had nothing to say to the spider, so he left them be for now, walking over to Tony again. 

“He is right about one thing: it won’t be long until the others start looking for them,” Loki said, leaning over Tony’s shoulder slightly. 

“Kind of looking forward to it, actually,” Tony said, not even looking up from his computer despite Loki’s closeness. “I’ve got all sorts of presents waiting for anyone else that wants to break in here now. Trust me, it’s gonna get real fun when others start showing up.” 

“Just what I like to hear,” Loki said, hand resting on Tony’s shoulder for a moment. 

OoOoOoOo

_Tony was having to fight the urge to just run away screaming. He had arranged to meet Loki at his lab again the next night, and he was pretty sure that he was lining himself up to end up in an elaborate death, despite the deal that he had made with the mad god. He figured that Loki would show up, pretend to show him how something worked, and then slit his throat and likely leave him in an embarrassing compromising position just as the extra ‘go fuck yourself’ that he probably deserved for agreeing to any of this._

_Still, his curiosity was getting to him even more than his fear. He was dying to know how this stuff worked, and he was dying to know just what Loki wanted for helping him. He figured that there was going to be something in trade that, while he might not miss it now, it would bite him in the ass later. Isn’t that how these things always worked? Loki was likely to be his Rumpelstiltskin or something, although he doubted shouting Loki’s name at him would get him out of the deal._

_While he waited for the god to show up, he continued to mess around with the Chitauri gun. He had taken it apart and put it back together a hundred times, but the damn thing wouldn’t work no matter what he did to it. He could only guess that there was an outside power source that he didn’t have access to. That didn’t shock him. He had been told that, when he had blown up the Chitauri mother ship, all of the Chitauri had dropped dead on the spot. So, they were all connected to it as well. Tony could only guess just how Loki was likely getting his hands on whatever power source to get whatever it was that he wanted out of Tony._

_Once again, he felt the chill in the air before actually seeing anything. Managing to stay much more calm than last time, he slowly turned around in his chair, finding Loki standing behind him by a few feet. That didn’t surprise him, but what did was how the god was dressed tonight. Instead of the green and gold armor, or even the leather armor, tonight he was wearing a long sleeved black shirt and black leather pants, but clubbing leather pants, not leather armor pants. He also had these boots that laced up his legs and, well, Tony might have taken an extra second or twelve to look before he met Loki’s gaze._

_“Didn’t think of you as one to wear lowly ‘Midgardian’ clothing,” Tony snarked at him, grinning as if he wasn’t worried or freak out or trying really hard to not stare at the god in leather._

_“There are some things about this realm that are worth keeping around,” Loki said, returning Tony’s smile. Why was Tony suddenly certain that Loki had worn something different just to unsettle him even more? “Are you ready for me to show you how that weapon that you have been tinkering with works?”_

_Tony pushed himself back from the workstation, allowing for Loki to get closer to it and…do whatever the hell it was that he was going to do. He watched as Loki started muttering to himself, in a language that Tony had NO clue what it was, slipping what looked like a small bead into the gun and, before Tony’s eyes, the gun started to glow again._

_“There you have it, just as promised,” Loki said, picking up the gun and handing it to Tony. Tony was grateful that he had the workroom sound proofed, because he turned in just enough time away from Loki to accidentally fire the gun, managing to blow up one of his cars in the process._

_“You know, I’d be more mad if I didn’t know I could replace that right now without blinking,” Tony said, wide eyed as he saw just how easy it was to blow anything up with this thing._

_“It’s a hair trigger, Stark. I’d be more careful if I were you.” Loki sounded mildly perturbed, although it was nothing more than pure luck that Tony didn’t hit HIM with that blast. “Wouldn’t want to hit anything less replaceable.”_

_“Yeah yeah,” Tony said, waving at him distractedly, although far more interested in the gun now sitting on the workbench again than the god’s warnings. “How the hell did you make this thing work? You got godly batteries or something in your pockets.” He snorted. “And that came out ALL wrong.”_

_He could feel Loki standing just a hair’s breath away from the back of his neck, and this time he was CERTAIN that the god was actually here rather than a hologram or whatever Loki might call it. “Just remember this, Stark. You only know what I want you to know.”_

_“And just what’s the fun in that?” Tony asked, this time daring to turn around and look the god head on. Maybe a couple of meetings without having his throat slit made him feel a little more cocky than he probably should, who knew what gave him the balls to do it? “I bet I can tell you more about yourself than you’d expect.”_

_“Now isn’t that a lovely challenge?” Loki said, staying close to Tony for a second longer than expected before straightening back up. “One we might have to pick up another time, though.”_

_Before Tony could ask why, there was a knock at his workshop door. He looked at the door quickly before turning his attention back to Loki, but the God of Mischief had already pulled his disappearing act._

_With a roll of his eyes, he turned and opened the locks, allowing for Steve to come into the room. “Everything alright in here? JARVIS said that there was some kind of explosion?”_

_“Yeah, just working with the Chitauri tech again,” Tony said with a wave of his hand. When he looked back at the weapon, it was dead again. Figured. “Still not having any real luck with it.”_

_“You’re getting kind of obsessive over this stuff, Tony,” Steve said to him, giving him that puppy dog look that made Tony kind want to chuck something at his head. “It’s not the end of the world if we don’t figure out how that thing can be turned back on.”_

_“You never know, Steve,” Tony said, standing up just the same. “It just might.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promise that the action will pick up more in the next chapter, both in the present and with the memories!


	10. Chapter 9

When Romanoff had woken up, she had made similar threats that Barton had made, and Tony had barely paid attention to the back and forth sniping between her and Loki. He knew he should likely listen more, but he was working on the little presents that he knew should be waiting on the rest of his former teammates when they would likely arrive to free their comrades in arms and then try to collect them as well. He had to admit that he was kind of looking forward to it.

He wondered if Thor was around. Tony knew that it was at least somewhat likely, as Loki had initially escaped Asgardian jails even to be here in the first place, but he also knew that getting in contact with the thunder god was a huge pain in the ass. Cell phones didn't work on other planets, as far as Tony knew of, although he was pretty sure that he could put one together that would, although he didn't want to imagine the bill that he'd get for the roaming charges.

Someone bitching in the cage dragged Tony from his musing about interplanetary cell phones. He had to look up to see who it even was. Romanoff, it turned out. The one that he was personally pissed at for his own reasons. She had infiltrated his company, lulled him into trusting her, and then he was forced to keep her around and not blow her 'cover.' She was lucky he didn't find a way to stab her then.

"I need to go to the bathroom," Romanoff said to him. Tony looked around, and realized that he was alone in the room with them. Where the hell had Loki gone? Had he gotten so wrapped up he missed the god leaving?

"Use the corner," Tony said simply, already wanting to go back to the project that he was currently working on. It seemed like someone was always interrupting him when he was working. It had been that way before everything happened, and it seemed to continue to be the case.

"Not exactly in line with how you keep prisoners, Tony," Romanoff said in a soft, soothing tone. "You can't walk me to the bathroom?"

"During which you'll attack me in some way and escape?" Tony asked her with a snort. "Come on, Romanoff. I'm Tony fucking Stark, not a Bond villain. Either hold it or piss in the corner. I can't smell it from here, so I don't really care which one you do." He really had absolutely no care which one she did. However, there was NO way he was willingly letting her out of that cage.

"Can I at least get some privacy?" she asked him in that same tone that was already starting to grate on his nerves. He just had the feeling that she was trying to get him to do something. He just had to figure out what it was. Or gas the both of them.

"Trust me, the LAST thing I want to do is watch you go to the bathroom. Now, I'm trying to work. Will you please shut the hell up and let me do so?" he snapped, attention already turning away from her.

Before she could protest, an alarm went off. "Might want to hold your wee then," Tony said, smirking at her before shutting his laptop, pushing his chair over to the monitors that he had set up that showed all of the security cameras. He could see that Thor and Rogers had gotten onto the first floor of the building. "Looks like the cavalry is here."

OoOoOoOo

_There were days that Tony felt like he was selling his soul for information about the Tesseract technology. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but the more that he learned about the one gun that Loki had decided to allow him to have working (which seemed to only work in only Tony's presence, annoyingly enough), the less he cared about something as intangible as a 'soul.' The technology itself was incredible. It was a gun that never needed to be reloaded or recharged. What was there to hate about that? If he could replicate the energy, then he would be in business._

_It was one late night in the lab that he was working on just that when he felt that oh so familiar chill in the air that signified his benefactor's presence. Tony turned around, all full of snark, only to feel any words die on his lips as soon as he saw Loki and the mess that he was._

_"I'm calling in that favor now, Stark," Loki rasped to him, crumpled up on the floor. His long black hair was matted and tangled with what looked like blood, and his armor had numerous tears through it, showing wounds underneath._

_"Wow, who'd you piss off this week?" Tony asked, still bending down and putting his arm around Loki's waist, helping him up from the floor. He had a small bed in the room that he sometimes crashed on, so he helped Loki over to it, gingerly laying him down on it._

_"I am sure that you do not want to know," Loki replied curtly. "I am here because I have nowhere else to go, not for your witty banter."_

_"You love our repartee and you know it," Tony replied, grabbing his giant first aid kit anyway, figuring he'd start work on Loki's face and go from there. It looked like something had dragged his face across some jagged concrete from all the scrapes on it. "And I mainly want to know to make sure that whatever did this isn't going to follow you here and do a similar job on me."_

_Loki hissed when Tony started to apply antiseptic to his scratches, but didn't pull away, thankfully. "Nothing will be following me here. I think it would be the last place anyone would look for me."_

_Tony supposed that he had a point there. NO ONE would look for him here. "No wonder you popped over here then, along with the 'no place to go' part. I didn't miss that. Makes being the bad guy suck more, huh?"_

_"It only 'sucks,' as you say, because it was one of your good guys who did this to me." Loki had said that so softly that Tony wouldn't have caught it if he weren't already so close._

_Tony felt his hand freeze in place when he realized what Loki meant by that. "Wait, are you saying that Thor did this to you?" He had to admit that it was something that he REALLY couldn’t believe._

_"Yes, hard to believe that the golden child would beat me within an inch of my life," Loki groused. Even during what was a serious moment, Tony realized that Loki had an amazing grasp of slang that Thor didn't seem to get no matter how many times he was around anyone. "You'd be amazed at just what Thor is capable of."_

_Tony didn't answer right away, instead, when he finished cleaning up Loki's face, went to start unbuckling the leather armor from Loki's chest and slowly removing it, stopping for a second every time that Loki winced until the god snapped that he was not made of glass and to just get it over with. When he finally did, Tony could see that Loki's injuries were much more extensive than he initially realized. He looked just as bad as when the Hulk slung him around like a rag doll during a child's temper tantrum. "Sweet zombie Jesus, man. He really did do a number on you." One of the things that Tony could see was what looked like a giant hammer print on Loki's chest. Not many people running around with a giant hammer. Sure, this could be some trick of Loki's, but it seemed out of place. Why would the god let him see him vulnerable like this?_

_Loki just sighed, body slowly relaxing and sinking into the bed. It seemed to have chilled him out that Tony was seemingly believing him, or at least willing to. "So, why'd he do it?" Tony had to know. He knew that he'd likely be turned into a toad just for asking, but he HAD to know._

_Loki grimaced. "He found me, on Midgard. It seemed he was not pleased that I had escaped. I believe his talk of us still being brothers is finally done. For that I'm relieved," he started to try and sit up, "but I could do without the beating with a hammer again. Quite annoying."_

_"Only you would call a hammer forged in a dying star annoying," Tony said with a roll of his eyes, gently pushing against Loki's shoulders and making him lay back down. "I know you heal super quickly, but you CAN'T move around right now. You're just going to fuck something up worse."_

_Loki looked like he was going to protest, but apparently something painful twinged and he groaned, lying back onto the mattress again. "No one's here tonight. Just you and me," Tony reassured him. "Well, and JARVIS, but he doesn't tell anyone anything I don't want him to. So, chill the fuck out and get some rest."_

_"You sound like you actually care," Loki said with a rueful smile._

_Tony sighed. Damn, it really did. "It's like you said, paying back that debt," he said quickly. "Speaking of that, I think I've got it figured out just how to power those damn weapons on my own without your little beads or whatever the hell you gave me last time."_

_"Is that so?" Loki almost looked relieved to have something else to talk about. "Does it have to do with that thing in your chest?"_

_Tony hated anyone speaking about his arc reactor. Everyone on the planet knew the very basics about it, but very few knew how it actually worked, and that was how he liked it. "Something like that," he said evasively. "That and the giant one that you borrowed that one time. Clean energy and all that." He had been reading his father's old notes on the Tesseract as well, and those were helping him out more than he wanted to admit._

_Tony was actually starting to think that his father had done a lot more studying of the Tesseract than he would have others wanting to know. Tony was starting to think something quite worrisome about that 'element' that his father had left notes behind that he had used, but it was something that he didn't want to admit, not even in his own head just yet, and he was usually was honest with himself._

_"I've been quite curious about that since it interfered with my spear," Loki admitted to him. "I still haven't quite figured out how you were able to avoid being taken over by it."_

_"Good thing you didn't think to aim a little toward the left," Tony joked. When Loki looked at him confused, he went on, pointing to where his heart was. "The human heart is on the left, not the middle." He wondered if he should have admitted that, but it was a **very** easy thing for him to learn about, wasn't it?_

_"I believe your device still would have interfered," Loki pointed out. "It has to do with your heart, even if it doesn't sit directly over it." Loki shrugged, and then cringed when he realized just what a bad idea that was to do with his injuries. "I suppose that we'll never know."_

_"Well, I'm happy about that. Not really thrilled with the idea of being anyone's mind slave," Tony remarked. "I enjoy having free will and all that jazz."_

_"The idea that we have control over our destinies is the greatest lie humanity ever made up," Loki said softly. "It's something that you may not like to hear, but I've been around long enough to realize that no matter what you do, it's impossible to fight fate."_

_Tony snorted. "So you were destined to try and take over Earth and wind up failing pretty miserably. You didn't even get part of one city."_

_"I think it is my destiny to fail," Loki remarked simply._

_"Now that's bullshit. I don't know **why** I'm encouraging you, because that'll likely to lead to bad things, but it's **no one's** destiny to fail constantly. Maybe you're just trying to do things the wrong way. Or maybe you should stop trying to kill people so often." That was a handy little idea._

_That managed to elicit a chuckle from Loki. "I'm still amused that you sound like you care about me."_

_"Yeah, freaky huh? I think we got a thing going on now. You teach me how to blow things up with weapons from another world, and I give you inspirational talk while patching up your boo-boos. We're a regular pair," Tony remarked. He really needed not to think on this for long. "Now come on. I can't handle letting you sleep this off in my lab. Makes me feel weird."_

_It took a few tries to make sure that he wasn't going to hurt him, but Tony managed to get Loki off what was basically a shitty cot and get him up to one of his guest rooms. He was quite grateful that Bruce was off at a conference and Steve was gone to SHIELD for some mission that they wanted him on. He did NOT want to explain this to anyone._

_He managed to get Loki in the bed and, after directing him to where the bathroom was, leaving him to his privacy._

OoOoOoOo

While Tony was distracted, Loki had decided to do a walk around the building, trying to figure out if there were any easy ways for someone to get into the place. He was having to remind himself that he could talk to Tony's 'helper' JARVIS while he was doing so. It would do nothing but help, after all.

"How many entrances are there to the building, JARVIS?" Loki asked as he walked down the stairwell. He knew that Tony had lived in the upper floors, but other floors had served other functions as well.

"There is a front and side entrance to the building, Mr. Loki," JARVIS explained. "Plus there is access through the roof that Mr. Barton and Ms. Romanoff tried to get into earlier, but you would have to scale the building to get to it."

"So, technically three entrances then," Loki mused. "Are they all locked?"

"Locked and alarms set if anyone manages to get inside," JARVIS replied.

"Seems that Tony thought of everything," Loki muttered to himself.

"Mr. Stark has had certain protocols in all of his homes since his trip to Afghanistan," JARVIS explained. "He did up all of the security here specifically after you first started spending time here, though. It seemed that he didn't want anyone to find out about his association with you."

Loki understood that the AI had basically the ability to think for itself, but it was actually quite clever at times. It was easy to forget that the thing was a machine. "And I wonder why that would be," Loki said sarcastically. That just meant that Tony had been as smart as everyone claimed that he was.

"Mr. Loki, there appears to be a break in going on the first floor of the building," JARVIS said, interrupting Loki's thoughts. "I've alerted Mr. Stark as well, also that it appears to be Mr. Banner and Mr. Rogers."

"Is it Banner or the monster that he becomes?" Loki asked.

"It is currently Mr. Banner, but I will add that he does not look pleased," JARVIS said. It did seem that the AI had absorbed some of Tony's personality as well. "Mr. Stark is currently suiting up in one of his 'hidden' suits."

"Tony has hidden suits?" Loki asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Ones that he worked on before he was taken away," JARVIS explained.

"Then I think it's time to greet our guests," Loki said, grinning. He was looking forward to this. He managed to teleport downstairs just as Banner and Rogers were coming through the front door. "I wasn't aware that we had sent out an invitation," he said, smiling as the two of them jumped and turned back toward him. Loki had chosen to lean against one of the walls, looking relaxed and like he didn't have a care in the world.

Rogers narrowed his eyes at him. Loki couldn't help but realize just how 'All American' the man really looked. It was just about ridiculous. "There really shouldn't be a 'we' in that statement," he growled at Loki.

"Well, there is, so you're just going to have to adjust to it at some point," Loki said, looking positively bored by the entire conversation when it had barely just begun. He wondered how much longer he was going to have to deal with this. He would much rather be fighting with one of these plebeians rather than trying to converse with them.

Banner had been more silent, simply staring at Loki, but it seemed that he was finally ready to talk. "It doesn't have to be this way, Loki. We don't have to go through all this. Why are you making this so hard?"

"You tend to get pissed off when someone erases your memories and sticks you in the booby hatch with a fake life shoved in your head." Somehow, even in the suit, Tony had managed to get into the room without anyone noticing. Loki personally wasn't sure how he had been able to creep in. Maybe it had something to do with the new suit? "Was that Fury's idea? It sounds like something that sick fucker would come up with."

"I'm sure you can figure out whose idea it was," Banner said simply, looking over at Tony but not meeting his eyes, even though he had his face plate up at the moment. "That's not the point, though. You were both acting insane. Don't you remember now, since you're here?"

"Oh trust me, I think we both know plenty now," Loki replied with a bitter smile. "Doesn't begin to excuse what you did to us." He couldn't think of something that he could do that was truly worth taking his memories away from him, or Tony's, either. "I think the time for talking is at an end. Now...is the battle."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you ready for the battle? I know I am!
> 
> So sorry that it took me so long to write! Still, I'm making sure to write at least 500 words a night on the week nights (weekends are too busy), so updates should be coming MUCH more often now.


	11. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten:

Tony was almost relieved when Loki sprang forth and attacked Rogers. It had gotten old really quick when they had started talking. Not that Tony didn't enjoy some good banter now and then when he was fighting with someone, but this one seemed like it was fraught with emotion and Tony just didn't want to deal with it.

Tony didn't leap into battle right away, though. Might as well try one more tactic before things really had to go south. Figuring that Loki had things taken care of with Captain America (if the Rogers sized hole he put in a wall was any indication), he aimed one of his repulsors at Banner, but didn't fire. "Doesn't have to be this way, Bruce," he said, letting the face plate lift up and reveal his face. "All you gotta do is stand down and we're good."

"What exactly are you planning to do if I do that?" Bruce's eyes were starting to turn green, but Tony knew that Bruce actually had more control than that. The man knew more breathing techniques to calm himself down than Tony had figures in his head.

"Same thing I try to do every night, Pinky. Take over the world," Tony said with a wink. "Or at least keep Fury's other eye in a glass jar to keep him from watching me and putting me in cages. You've been in a cage before, little more literal than mine but you were. Sucked, didn't it?"

"In so many words, yes," Bruce said, all of his muscles tense. Both of them were ignoring the fight raging next to them, simple stepping out of the way when Loki or Rogers came too close to them, or a piece of debris came too close. "What did you want us to do, though?"

"You keep saying that we were crazy," Tony commented as they kept circling one another. "I'm feeling a bit pissed off right now, but not exactly crazy. Well...no more crazy than I was before." You didn't come out of a cave in Afghanistan completely sane. He wondered why people didn't realize that. Maybe they just wanted him to be the same old Tony so bad that they pretended to not see any problems that were likely there.

Before Bruce could say anything, though, all the dodging in the world didn't quite prepare Tony for the stupid shield that came his way, knocking him slightly off balance. He didn't topple over, though, instead turning back toward Rogers. "Did _no one_ ever explain to you what a shield is actually for?" he asked, more annoyed than anything. "Besides, rude much? We were having a conversation." It would have been nice not to deal with a Hulk.

"Didn't realize we were here to talk," Rogers said, just a hint of a smirk that Tony suddenly wanted to wipe off his face in the worst way.

Tony's faceplate dropped back into place and, without warning, he turned his repulsors toward Roger and fired. Rogers managed to block the worst of it with his shield, but Tony still managed to knock him back into another wall. "Wow, so you _do_ know what it's for," he said. He then turned back to Bruce, who looked about three seconds from a full Hulk-out. "What? He started it," he said with a shrug, pointing at Rogers.

OoOoOoOo

While Tony had chosen to banter (despite his own tiredness of such a thing), Loki had decided straight away to attack Rogers. He was more than ready to simply take out this annoying creature. He was righteous in all the wrong ways that annoyed him to no end. It made him think of Thor, actually, always thinking that he was right, no matter what it was that he was doing. He pulled his staff from his hidden dimensional pocket, swinging it at Rogers before he had too much time to anticipate an attack.

Rogers lifted up his shield to prevent the hit, but Loki wasn't too surprised by that, swiftly dropping down and moving out with his leg to sweep it under Rogers, doing what he wanted and knocking him down, although, when he went to jab him with his staff, Rogers managed to roll out of the way in enough time to avoid being impaled.

"You know, I was looking forward to this rematch," Rogers commented, getting himself back off the ground with only a slight wince. Loki wanted to continue to beat him until he couldn't move anymore. Something about the man infuriated him. Too light and golden, he was sure.

"Then I hope I do not disappoint," Loki said, letting Rogers straighten himself up in just enough time to send a bolt of magical energy toward him, sending him flying with a green ball of light against the wall, barely noticing that he had put a large crack in it with Rogers' body.

Loki could still hear Tony talking in the background. He understood that Tony had been especially close to Banner before everything had happened, and at least he seemed more interested in bringing him over to their side than being ‘reasoned’ with. Loki realized that he might have been very annoyed otherwise. Still, it seemed that Tony was mostly stalling the inevitable, especially when Rogers decided to interrupt with his shield. That seemed to finally push Banner over the edge, and Loki could feel himself stiffen as Banner grew in size, ripping through his clothing. 

Just as he was done, Tony fired a shot at the beast, causing it to roar in his direction. “Let’s not make a repeat of the rag doll incident,” Tony said, flying through the nearest window as he led the Hulk away. 

“So much for containment,” Loki heard Rogers mutter under his breath. 

“Oh, would it have been easier if the populous didn’t know about us?” Loki asked, eyebrow arched. “Hiding us away like your dirty little secret?” 

“I’m still not completely certain that you don’t have Tony under a spell,” Roger remarked, raising his shield again. “That has to be the **only** way that he can listen to you talk so much.” 

“Funny, I had thought the same thing about you before he saw the light,” Loki said with a laugh. When Rogers charged him, he wound up pushing straight through one of Loki’s clones, while the actual Loki fired a ball of magical energy at him from behind, knocking him down. 

“You people really do always fall for that.” 

OoOoOoOo

_When Loki awoke, much of the pain that he had been experiencing earlier had ceased. He was not entirely healed as of yet, but it seemed that he would at least be able to walk around without assistance. It took some time to finish stripping himself out of the clothing that Stark had left on him, but he managed well enough, deciding that he would use the facilities attached to this bedroom and take a shower, wanting to rinse the rest of the blood from his hair and skin. While Loki truly was relieved that Thor had ceased any true idea of familial relations, it seemed that he had went to the other extreme, something Loki could have done without._

_It took him a second to figure out the knobs in the bathroom, but soon he had a steaming hot shower going. As much as he found heat intolerable due to his nature, he much preferred the idea of hot water soothing his aches than anything cold. Once he stepped under the torrential downpour, his eyes nearly rolled back into his head, the water felt so good. He found some soaps to use (he was grateful that Stark seemed to keep even rooms unused stocked to the brim with anything a person might need) and started to get to work cleaning himself, his mind unwittingly wandering back to his confrontation with his former brother._

_He had been searching, actually. It wasn’t for anything of serious importance, simply an ingredient needed for a spell he wished to perform. Maybe that was why he had gotten sloppy in cover his tracks in all ways. He had liked coming and going as he pleased recently, with no worries other than keeping himself shielded from Heimdall, but it seemed that Thor had other ways of tracking him. Leave it to Thor to suddenly get smart enough to be an effective tracker just when Loki was getting comfortable. He had thought to do something so simple that Loki didn’t think of it:  simply staking out enough places that Loki might frequent that he happened to stumble upon him._

_Loki had certainly lapsed a bit in predicting his former brother, but it seemed that Thor had grown in astuteness since their last meeting. Thor hadn’t visited him in the magical prison that had been created for him on Asgard, and Loki had eventually grown tired of being contained and escaped. No one but the “great” Allfather had visited him, mostly to tell him that no one else would be coming for him. How right he had been. Loki almost wondered if he had grown more mad in his loneliness. It was quite possible._

_Thor had found him fairly easily, although Loki thought it helped him immensely that he wasn’t as careful as he should have been, but it seemed that Thor merely wanted to collect him to put him back in that blasted cage. There wasn’t even the basest pleas of familial attachment, simply that he should step in line and accept his punishment._

_Because dear sweet Thor had always been one to accept punishment simply as something that was good for him before._

_There had been very little talk between the two of them. Thor had insisted that he come back to Asgard, Loki had said no, and then Thor had attacked. It was quite possible that Thor had simply thought that Loki would quickly give up, or vanish without a trace, but that had not been the case. Loki had been furious with himself that he had allowed for Thor to find him at all, and had fought back with all of the viciousness that he had in him._

_The battle had been vicious, and, while Loki was relieved that Thor was no longer calling to feelings that were no longer there, that didn't meant that he enjoyed having that blasted hammer slammed against him several times. So much for brotherly love._

_He'd had to vanish at the last moment. It had actually taken the last of his magic to get away, as he'd had to expend quite a bit of it on fighting with Thor. He didn't even have enough to heal himself. That was partly why he had picked Stark's home to go to. The man owed him a favor, after all._

_Not that he didn't expect Stark to eventually call on his compatriots to come and collect him. Even if he truly was suicidal enough to keep a known wanna-be despot in his home, he had that group of friends that came and went as they pleased. Loki knew that he couldn't stay long._

_Even though, after some rest, he could at least physically get out of there, something was holding him back from immediately fleeing. He couldn't put his finger on it, though. If he thought on it, it might simply be that he was reluctant to leave without saying goodbye to Stark, but he wouldn't admit to that._

_Once he was done with his shower, he wandered back to the bed, sitting down on it with only a towel wrapped around his waist. He wondered where his leathers were. He knew that Stark had removed some of them while trying to tend to his wounds, and now he had no idea what he'd done with them. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't exactly leave without his clothes, after all. He really needed to figure out what Stark had done with those._

_He got up, still wearing only the towel, looking up toward the ceiling. "JARVIS?" he called out._

_"Yes, Mr. Loki?" the clipped voice rang out. Loki hadn't realized that the AI was programmed to recognize and respond to him._

_"Where is Stark right now?" Loki asked, continuing to look at the ceiling as if he could somehow see the AI._

_"He's currently passed out in his bedroom, sir," the AI calmly explained. "Is there something that I can help you with?"_

_"It's actually something that I'd like to ask him myself," Loki said. "Would you mind directing me to his room. I promise I won't keep him long." He had the feeling that Stark rarely did any real sleeping._

_It sounded like the AI was reluctant, if Loki went by the small pause before he started to give directions, but obey it did._

_OoOoOoOo  
Tony had been passed out. After helping Loki to bed, he'd been too exhausted to do anything else but stagger off to his own bedroom and hit the bed. He wasn't sure where the exhaustion had come from, in all honesty. Maybe it was from trying to think of Thor actually attacking Loki. He had professed all sorts of love and caring for his brother when he had last seen the man, after all. What changed?_

_He was curious, but asking too much of that of Loki was liking poking the bear, the prickly bear that could rip him in half like a phone book if even slightly annoyed. Besides, if Loki wanted him to know, he'd tell him. Since Loki did like to go on soliloquies on occasion, he doubted that it would be long before the God of Mischief blurted out just what had went on between the two to change things._

_Still, of all the things he expected to happen, a damp Loki wrapped in nothing but a towel was not what he expected at his doorway when he woke up. While he had been passed out, he never slept deep enough anymore that he couldn't hear when someone opened his door. Leave it to being kidnapped and kept prisoner in a cave in the desert to leave a bastard paranoid._

_As soon as he heard the door open, his eyes fluttered open, flickering over to the doorway and seeing a Loki who looked in a bit better shape than Tony had left him in. "You wouldn't happen to remember what you did with my armor, do you?" the Asgardian asked, arching an eyebrow at him as he smirked._

_Tony couldn't help but wonder if he was dreaming. He wasn't sure that there was **any** reality where something as sinful looking as Loki only wrapped in a towel would show up in his bedroom._

_Tony blinked at him, trying to clear the sleep out of his brain. "A lot of that stuff isn't exactly fit to wear, anymore," he pointed out. "I didn't take away all of your clothes, though." A fair point, he thought._

_Loki shrugged, and Tony couldn't help but watch the towel move slightly on his hips as he did. Yeah, he had to be dreaming. "I had a shower and wanted my armor. I figured that I would come to you to find out what happened to it," Loki explained, feigning nonchalance. "I'm sure I could mend it."_

_"Uh-huh." Tony forced himself to sit up, pushing himself to the edge of the bed. "You could have asked JARVIS. He could have told you where they are." Why wasn't he just telling the mad god where his stuff was so that he'd get out of his room?_

_Because then he'd leave and Tony wasn't completely sure that he wanted him to._

_He watched, eyes starting to finally fully clear from sleep as Loki walked, no...sauntered into the room, smiling as he leaned down and planted a hand on each side of Tony, looking him squarely in the eyes. Tony leaned back slightly, not quite comfortable with the sudden closeness. "Are you trying to stall me, Stark? I would figure you would be relieved to have me on my way."_

_He had a good point. Even if his comfort level was very slowly starting to rise around him, he knew that so many issues could happen if anyone else discovered him here. The longer that he was around, the more likely that would happen. Just because he was alone in the tower now didn't mean that would continue to even tomorrow. "Maybe I'm just dying for you to stick around for an extra day so I can pick your brain more."_

_“I wonder if there are things that you want to do other than pick my brain,” Loki said to him. He arched his eyebrow at him, and damn if that wasn’t one of the sexiest things that he’d ever seen._

_That was when Tony knew that what he should really do was push Loki away and go back to sleep. This was weird and he was still only half sure that this was some sort of dream. Of course, if it really was a dream, then what did it matter what he did?_

OoOoOoOo

Loki hadn't been shocked when Rogers had fallen for jumping through a double. The man was cut from the same dull cloth as Thor was, and Thor had fallen for them constantly throughout their long lives. He had almost felt bad for tricking people who thought so simple.

Almost.

He had seen that his magic had actually managed to blast through his uniform and cause some damage to him, a cut going across his stomach. "Prepared to give up yet?" Loki asked, now leaning against a wall, looking positively bored. "Things really would just be easier if you gave in. Who knows? You might actually enjoy it."

"Sorry, I'm just one of those hard headed types," Rogers said as he pushed himself up off the ground, hand going to his abdomen where the wound was.

"You really are making this far more complicated than it has to be," Loki pointed out. "It's always easier to let go than hold onto those old beliefs." It had been much easier for Loki to let go rather than keep those old hurts.

"I'm kind of attached to those old beliefs," Rogers said to him, even as he was leaning against the wall himself. Loki would personally rather him give in instead of wasting the effort to kill him, after all. "Besides, no one's going to work with you now after what you did."

"If you're really still stinging over that invasion, it wasn't like I wasn't going to rebuild the place..." Loki started, but, rudely enough, Roger interrupted.

"Do you really not remember?" His facial expression switched from angry to just confused. "Fury said that your memories might not all come back at once..."

Loki arched an eyebrow at him. "What are you talking about?"

Rogers sighed, forcing himself to stand up straight, letting his hand drop from his wound. "Haven't you wondered where your brother was yet?"

Loki actually shook his head. He assumed that Thor was stuck on Asgard or something.

"He's dead, Loki! You don't remember killing him?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN DUN!!!! The big reveal. Ok, one of the big reveals. Feel free to throw things at me. 
> 
> Apologies for this update taking so long! I admit to hating writing actions scenes, and you can't get an Avengers fic without some action, for real. Hopefully, the next chapter will come out quicker. Hope everyone enjoyed!


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